Will biometrics help fight crimes, asks Supreme Court

Will biometrics help fight crimes, asks Supreme Court

Context:

• The Supreme Court on Wednesday questioned the argument put forth by petitioners in Aadhaar cases that collection of personal information of citizens by the state would lead to totalitarianism.

Court’s argument:

• Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, one of the five judges of the Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra hearing the challenge to the Aadhaar scheme as a violation of the fundamental right to privacy, said an individual ought to have no objection if the state accessed his or her personal data to check if he was paying taxes.

What is Aadhaar?

• Aadhaar is a 12 digit unique-identity number issued to all Indian residents based on their biometric and demographic data.
• The data is collected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a statutory authority established by the Government of India, under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, under the provisions of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, benefits and services) Act, 2016.
• To obtain an Aadhaar number, an individual has to submit his, (i) biometric (photograph, fingerprint, iris scan) and (ii) demographic (name, date of birth, address) information.  The Unique Identification Authority (UID) may specify other biometric and demographic information to be collected by regulations.

Aadhaar as a threat to the fundamental right to privacy:

This increased ambit of usage of Aadhaar has also raised privacy concerns.

• It put threat on personal information of an individual. The term “personal information” (not used in the Act) can be understood in a broader sense, which includes not only identity information but also other information about a person, for instance where she travels, whom she talks to on the phone, how much she earns, what she buys, her Internet browsing history, and so on.
• One more concern is that the Aadhaar Act includes a blanket exemption from the safeguards applicable to biometric and identity information on “national security” grounds.

Benefit of using personal information:

• To combat terrorism
• To counter money-laundering cases.
• To deal with corruption.