Plea in HC raises concerns over security of Aadhaar data

A fresh plea was today moved in the Delhi High Court raising concerns about Aadhaar data security and privacy of individuals, in the wake of several reported leaks of personal information of people from the Unique Identification Authority of India's (UIDAI) database.

The matter, seeking directions to the Centre to either allow people to opt out of the system or deletion of the entire existing UIDAI data in view of the security breaches, came up before a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Chander Shekhar which declined to hear it now as the Supreme Court was dealing with the Aadhaar issue.

The high court listed it for hearing in August.

The petitioner, Kerala-based lawyer Shamnad Basheer, has alleged in his plea that there were several breaches of the Aadhaar system leading to leakage of personal information of individuals since January this year and contended that UIDAI and the Centre were liable to compensate people whose data was compromised.

Referring to one such breach, the plea said a media house had managed to gain access to the entire database by paying a sum of Rs 500.

It said the breach, which was acknowledged by UIDAI and later led to the lodging of a criminal case against those involved, was a result of a leak of the "access control" given to some individuals.

The petition has contended that the breaches occurred due to the "negligence and willful recklessness" on the part of UIDAI to adopt reasonable security measures to secure the private information.

It also claimed that UIDAI was obligated to frame a comprehensive information security and privacy policy and sought action against the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for its alleged failure to adhere to security practices.

The plea further seeks setting up of an independent investigative committee to probe and audit all security and privacy breaches of the Aadhaar database.