The Centre recently asserted before the Supreme Court that biometric details of individuals were not shared with anyone and that it was almost impossible to break its encryption even as the court asked questions regarding denial of benefits for want of biometric authentication.
Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey stated, “Aadhaar provides a robust, lifetime, reusable, nationally on-line verifiable ID card to citizens.”
He further made a power-point presentation for the same and presented before a five-judge Constitution Bench comprising of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra as well as justices AK Sikri, AM Khanwilkar, DY Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, to show that the Aadhaar software was not linked to the internet because the government considered that possibility that it might be hacked.
Pandey further stated, “Biometrics is never given out. Our software is such that the moment the resident presses the save key, entire data gets encrypted by the 2048-bit key. To break one key, the fastest computer in the world will take more than the life of the universe.”
The bench also asked questions on security as well as protection of data collected at enrolment centres, fear of data theft and blacklisting 49,000 enrolment centres by UIDAI.
Pandey said only the software used for biometric matching was foreign and the companies didn't share the ‘source code’ and that, even banks were using them. He further stated that some of the enrolment centres were blacklisted as they were charging money from individuals and harassing them.
Pandey said for those unable to give biometrics due to old age or any other reason, there was an exception handling mechanism in place. In such cases, authentication will be on the basis of photographs and their mobile number verifiable through an OTP. Even face authentication will be implemented from July this year as well.
