Will take more than age of universe to hack data: Aadhaar chief to SC

New Delhi: Probably for the first time in the annals of the Supreme Court, it allowed the CEO of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to make a Power Point presentation on various aspects of Aadhaar scheme, for which the government has already spent Rs 9,000 crore.

Making the presentation for 80 minutes before a five-judge Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AK Sikri, AM Kanwilkar, DY Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, the CEO, Dr Ajay Bhushan Pandey, allayed the apprehensions with regard to leakage of data and security breach.

He said the data is encrypted and secured in the depository, which is not connected with Internet, and there was no possibility of leakage or security breach.

On the query for a mechanism to prevent financial exclusion and denial of benefits to even one person for lack of Aadhaar, the CEO said the whole object of Aadhaar was not to deny benefit, subsidy or service to any one for lack of authentication of Aadhaar.

He said 'exception handling mechanism' has been provided in the law to ensure that even if there is failure of authentication of finger print details, there are other means like facial print or by means of 'one time pin' (OTP) through mobile phone.

He said this kind of exercise of providing identity cards has never been attempted anywhere by the mankind and so far more than 1.2 billion citizens have Aadhaar.

He said Aadhaar is one nationally acceptable robust verifiable ID card. Dispelling doubts on leakage, he said all biometrics data are encrypted with 2048 bit encryption and it will require more than the age of universe to break the one encrypted key.

To a question from the Bench whether Biometrics data was being shared, he clarified only personal information is shared to the banks through e-kyc without biometric information, which is safe and secured and not shared with anyone.

From July this year face identification will be used for authentication and soon QR codes on Aadhaar will have photo. He said the total expenditure on an Aadhaar Card is less than one dollar.

Asked by Justice Sikri whether the software used is obtained from foreign companies, the CEO clarified that the software for biometric matching is from outside and UIDAI has licence to use it, “but the software data is in our control”.

Further Aadhaar data servers are not exposed to Internet but connected with lease lines.

When Justice Sikri said that people suffer due to failure of authentication and left high and dry, the CEO said the object is not to deny benefits for lack of Aadhaar.

When Justice Chandrachud pointed out that denial of benefits due to failure of authentication is one thing and failure to provide benefits even after authentication has to be remedied, the CEO said such a contingency has been taken care off and no one would be denied benefits, as there are other means of identity that could be used.  

When Justice Sikri questioned CEO about the death of a lady in Jharkhand, who was denied PDS benefits for want of Aadhaar, but the ration was shown delivered to that lady; “how do you deal with such a situation?  What’s the mechanism?”

The CEO said “the lady was told that the authentication has failed though authentification was approved we did a probe. We found that in the same village the shop keeper not only denied food grains to the lady but to few others also saying biometrics didn’t match   But it matched   Every problem can’t be solved by Aadhaar".

Earlier the Attorney General K.K. Venugopal submitting that an expenditure of Rs 9,000 crores has been incurred by the government of India in the establishment and operation of the UIDAI. He said proof of identity is critical for the poor to gain access to basic services, such as healthcare, social benefits and financial services.

Similarly, identities are important for the bottom 40 per cent of the population to have better access to job opportunities. According to a cost benefit analysis study done by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in 2012, the investment on the Aadhaar project would provide a return of as high as 52.85 per cent to the government.

Quoting World Bank report, he said with over 1.2 billion enrolments under the Aadhaar scheme, India is much ahead of other nations, the objective is to attain the goal of legal identity and sustainable development for each individual by 2030. The power point presentation will continue on March 27.