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India's Top Court Refuses To Scrap Aadhaar, the World's Largest Biometric ID Database (huffingtonpost.in)

Posted by msmash on from the meanwhile-in-India dept.

India's top court refused to scrap Aadhaar, the world's largest biometric database, in a ruling announced Wednesday, upholding the validity of the sprawling digital-identity program but also imposing some restrictions on its use and proliferation. Huffington Post reports: The majority judgement of the court read down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act of 2016, holding that private companies cannot insist on Aadhaar numbers from citizens to provide services. The court upheld the validity of linking aadhaar to PAN cards, suggesting that -- should the government wish it -- anyone who pays income tax will have to an aadhaar number anyway. However, the court held the linking of aadhaar numbers to bank accounts, as mandated by an amendment to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act of 2002, was unconstitutional. The court also held that educational institutions and bodies like the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) and University Grants Commission (UGC), and schools and colleges, cannot ask for Aadhaar details of potential candidates.

Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, and Justices AK Sikri and AM Khanwilkar delivered a concurrent majority judgement, while Justices DY Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan delivered separate opinions. The majority judgement, read out in a packed courthouse by Justice Sikri, relied heavily on the court's landmark 2017 Privacy judgement. "Today the Supreme Court has passed a historic judgement on Aadhaar," said Supreme Court Advocate Prashant Bhushan. "They have held several parts of the Aadhaar act to be unconstitutional." The court's decision restricting private companies from demanding Aadhaar numbers, Bhushan said, would come as a relief. The ruling could come as a blow for local companies -- like Jio and Paytm -- that rely heavily (or even exclusively) on technologies such as Aadhaar's eKYC (an Aadhaar-enabled Know Your Customer service) to grow their customer base, analysts say.

6 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Re:There will be more missing laptops as a result by nagora · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know about India but in the West, a laptop with a the data they need will mysteriouly go missing.

    And turn up in India.

    The real problem here isn't so much that India is the identity theft capital of the world but that people apparently think they can trust the database! It costs about $50 to bribe an Indian technician to do just about anything short of giving you their first-born son (daughters you can have for free); how many of these biometric entries are in there solely to serve as provenance for false identities?

    --
    "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
  2. This is the stupidest ruling ever! by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The whole idea of this Aadhar system is to prevent impersonation and changing identities. In India there is no real way to find who a person is. People casually migrate across the border and melt into the society. People borrow from banks or private parties and abscond. People submit fake certificates of degrees and diplomas. Most retail stores maintain two sets of books and the owners are usually untraceable.

    Indian government is making serious efforts to reduce tax evasion, and personal fraud by making cash transactions difficult. Suddenly announces denomination of large currency notes, and only people who can prove they really earned the money legally get new notes, and all the old black money notes become useless.

    But there is so much corruption nothing really changes.

    This ruling allows the government to collect the data. But prevents it from using it to reduce fraud.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:This is the stupidest ruling ever! by Frankie70 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Indian government is making serious efforts to reduce tax evasion, and personal fraud by making cash transactions difficult. Suddenly announces denomination of large currency notes, and only people who can prove they really earned the money legally get new notes, and all the old black money notes become useless.

      But 99.3% of the old notes came back into the system. So the supposed blackmoney people were able to exchange their cash for new notes. By bribing bankers, by employing people to stand in line and exchange old notes in smaller sums, by paying workers in old cash which the workers would then exchange etc, etc. So essentially it was an exercise in futility.

    2. Re:This is the stupidest ruling ever! by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Yes, corruption is so rampant

      But, a point was made, black money in cash is not safe. It leads to out of control valuation of real estate and insatiable demand for gold.

      But the news was not leaked ahead of time, it came as a rude shock and rattled some of the big black money sharks. They had to discount it. The sharks had to pay some 20% to 40% discount to convert old notes to new. It devalued the black money by that amount. It might nudge more honest people to use more of banking, and avoid black money transactions.

      Before this move, real estate sector was always "1 crore in white 2 core in black" deals. Some honest folks are balking now in accepting suitcases full of cash. There is a small change in attitude about black money in India. But small.

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      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  3. Aadhaar is actually good.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm from India and I actually think in the current Indian context aadhaar is actually a good idea.. Aadhaar uses biometrics to make sure that one person is unable to obtain a second Aadhaar ID even if they apply for one with different set of ID's.. It is very common for people here to have multiple ID's to file tax, obtain social benefits, open multiple bank account with different names etc.. Aadhaar puts an end to all this.. As it is the social welfare schemes have already plugged massive pilferage running into billions of rupees by using Aadhaar... India is not at a stage where the privacy and other related higher luxury concerns do not apply to us at this point in time...

  4. Re:If you believe that, I have some bridges on off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    the problem with westerns like you is that you have no idea or do not understand the real issues developing countries like India face..
    you see India from a western lens that does not help or apply to solve Indian problems...