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UIDAI chief defends safety of Aadhaar data before SC
What has happened?
- CEO of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Ajay Bhushan Pandey, was given the unique opportunity to conduct a PowerPoint presentation in a courtroom of the five-judge Constitution Bench, led by Chief Justice of India DipakMisra.
- According to him It would take more than the age of the universe for the fastest computer on earth, or any super-computer, to break one key of Aadhaar encryption
Data encrypted
Data was protected by a 2048-bit encryption
Court: Why the UIDAI had blacklisted 49,000 registered operators?
CEO:The CEO replied that these operators were de-registered for corruption, carelessness and harassment of the public.
Aadhaar update
CEO: Biometric changes could be updated through a process called ‘Aadhaar update.
Court:The tribal and people living on the fringes are poor and illiterate. How will they know what to do?
Alternatives mechanisms for authentication
Court: Does UIDAI have any statistics on the number of Aadhaar authentication failures so far?
CEO:Referred to provisions in the Aadhaar (Authentication) Regulations, 2016, to point out that there were alternatives to biometric authentication like demographics and electronic One Time Pin (OTP).