-The Times of India MUMBAI: Cyberspace security experts are worried about the risk to customers using Aadhaar numbers and one-time passwords for authentication of financial transactions after it was revealed that a large cache of Aadhaar numbers had become public. Bengaluru-based think tank, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), has published a report highlighting how 13.5 crore Aadhaar accounts have been exposed by government departments. The report, by Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali,...

-The Economic Times Aadhaar came with a lot of promises. They were brought by some of the brightest in India. Aadhaar promises to remove duplicates and ghosts from government databases, deliver subsidies to beneficiaries, collect taxes, provide financial inclusion and eliminate corruption. Here is why it cannot deliver anything it promises. Aadhaar came with a lot of promises. They were brought by some of the brightest in India. Promise 1: Removing Fraud and Duplicates In...

-Frontline.in The Aadhaar project’s headlong push towards “total” enrolment of Indian citizens threatens the privacy of individuals on an unprecedented scale, while its patchy biometric system acts as a tool of denial for the most vulnerable. Meanwhile, the UID chugs along, regardless, fuelled by the avarice of private interests who seek to cash in on citizen data. IN the last seven years, the right to privacy of Indian citizens has been...

-Business Standard Not only is your privacy stripped stark naked, the system itself is illegal and vulnerable Indians have serious red tape PTSD. We live with chronic anxiety about the documents that get us the entitlements and paid services we need — food, cooking gas, SIM cards, sale deeds, passports and so on. We’re so tyrannised by bureaucracy that when we hear of an official document that might simplify life, we fall...

-The Hindu Business Line Aadhaar does more damage than good in welfare programmes It is widely believed that Aadhaar-Based Biometric Authentication (ABBA) is necessary to improve the delivery of welfare programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Public Distribution System (PDS), social security pensions, and so on. This is a misconception. We have been studying these programmes for a decade, focusing mainly on the source of leakages and...