Three companies going to be investigated for illegal use of India’s Aadhaar national biometric ID program, reports The Times of India.
The Unique Identification Authority of India, which administrates Aadhaar, has filed a request for official investigation of the firms with the Delhi Police after discovering that an unusual number of biometric authentication transactions had been performed through Axis Bank, Suvidhaa Infoserve, and eMudhra. Given that the repeated transactions involved the same biometric data, UIDAI authorities became suspicious that the biometric data had been stored by these organizations for use later, which is illegal.
Two of those organizations have already acknowledged the issue. An Axis Bank spokesperson pointed the finger at Suvidhaa, which is a “business correspondent” of the bank, adding that “there is no financial loss caused by the testing done by Suvidhaa.” Suvidhaa Infoserve CEO Paresh Rajde, responding to an inquiry from The Times of India, explained that during a test of an application, a “developer had sent four transactions concurrently which is not allowed.” eMudhra, meanwhile, did not respond to The Times of India’s inquiry.
The involvement of the police may be in part a means of signalling the seriousness with which the government will treat misuse of its Aadhaar system, which contains sensitive user data that is being used for an increasing number of purposes in Indian society, from government employee tracking to everyday banking.
Source: The Times of India
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February 24, 2017 – by Alex Perala
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