Global Courant
The Indian government on Monday reassured confidence in its digital identification system, Aadhaar, after a Moody’s report last week highlighted concerns about it, such as setting up authorization and biometric reliability.
India’s ministry of electronics and IT said the Moody’s report “does not cite any primary or secondary data or research to support the opinions presented therein.”
The Aadhaar card, issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), has a unique number linked to a person’s fingerprints, facial and eye scan.
Moody’s had said in its report that Aadhaar’s system often results in denial of services, and questioned the reliability of biometric technologies, especially for blue-collar workers in hot, humid climates.
Responding to the concerns, the ministry has said that payments to employees under schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are made by directly crediting money to their account and the employee does not have to authenticate with using his biometric data.
The government also said that Moody’s report ignores that biometric submission is also possible through contactless means such as facial authentication and iris authentication.
Responding to the investor service’s concerns over security and privacy vulnerabilities caused by Aadhaar, the government said no breach has been reported from the Aadhaar database to date.
India’s Supreme Court upheld Aadhaar’s validity in 2018, but flagged privacy concerns and curbed a government attempt to make it mandatory for everything from banking to telecom services. REUTERS
