Get full access to one story every week, and to summaries of all other stories. Just create a free account

On 28 July, newspapers reported that UIDAI, the state-owned agency that manages India’s unique identity project, Aadhaar, had filed a police complaint against Qarth Technologies, a company that was acquired in 2016 by Ola, India’s largest ride-sharing platform.

UIDAI accused Qarth’s founders of illegally accessing the Aadhaar data for all of 2017. And yet strangely, UIDAI also maintained that “there has been no breach, no leakage and no theft of data.”

The victimless crime wasn’t the first, and it won’t be the last. Because Aadhaar’s privacy and security goals are in conflict with its commerce and identity ambitions.

At the simplest level, Aadhaar as a unique 12-digit number solves the ID problem for everyone in india via biometric deduplication. Basic demographic details such as name, date of birth, photograph, email address and a phone number along with iris and fingerprints are stored in a central identity data repository (CIDR), also known as the core.

At last count, over 1.15 billion Indians were enrolled under Aadhaar, including over 99% of those over the age of 18.

From the beginning, experts said that centralisation of such a big database was bad system design and would be vulnerable to attacks. By way of answer, it was protected by layers of firewalls and never exposed to the rough badlands of the public internet, where rogue hackers regularly scan every single known address for vulnerabilities and ruthlessly exploit them.

But over time, Aadhaar evolved from just an identity project to a mammoth identity platform, linking together every aspect of modern lifetaxes, schools, subsidies, healthcare, banking, home ownership, telephony and even post-retirement pension.

But a locked down database is not of much use when your ambition is to be an identity platform that would take on Google and Facebook in scope. Because for the Aadhaar project to succeed it has to provide value, and value can be provided only if the data collected is shared and made available to all applications that rely on Aadhaar.

And thus, the core stayed locked down while hundreds of applications now formed the periphery, together making up the Aadhaar ecosystem. But with the core being impregnable for all practical purposes, what about the security of the periphery?

Secure core, porous periphery

Securing the Aadhaar peripherycomposed of hundreds of different types of apps and services from hundreds of different entitiesis much tougher than securing the Aadhaar core. And even if it were technically possible to secure them all, it would slow down the growth of the Aadhaar ecosystem.

Thus the Indian government provided a neat solutionwhat if a law could be passed that penalise an application at the periphery leaking data? Surely the fear of jail and loss of reputation would make application developers pay attention to data security went the thinking.

AUTHOR

Anand Venkatanarayanan

Previously a Senior Engineer with NetApp, Anand describes his current affiliations as "Chief Financial Officer at HasGeek during the day, Security Researcher during evenings and Privacy Advocacy after dark. He was mostly into Data Security and recently has taken an interest in application and end point security. He is a known privacy buff and mistakenly believes that everyone should care about their privacy.

View Full Profile

Subscribe to read this story

The Ken is the only business subscription you need. Questions?

 

Premium

  • 5 original and reported longform business stories every week
  • Access to ONLY India edition
  • Close to 250 exclusive stories every year
  • Full access to over 6 years of paywalled stories
  • Pick up to 5 premium subscriber newsletters
  • 4 original and reported longform business stories each week
  • Access to ONLY Southeast Asia edition
  • Close to 200 exclusive stories every year
  • Full access to all paywalled stories since March 2020
  • Pick up to 5 premium subscriber newsletters

Rs. 2,750 /year

$ 120 /year

India Edition
Subscribe Subscribe
Most Asked For

Borderless

  • 8 original and reported longform business stories each week
  • Access to both India and Southeast Asia editions
  • Close to 400 exclusive stories every year
  • Full access to over 6 years of paywalled stories across India and Southeast Asia
  • Unlimited access to all premium subscriber newsletters
  • Visual Stories

Rs. 4,200 /year

Subscribe
 

Echelon

  • 8 original and reported longform business stories each week
  • Access to both India and Southeast Asia editions
  • Close to 400 exclusive stories every year
  • Full access to over 6 years of paywalled stories across India and Southeast Asia
  • Unlimited access to all premium subscriber newsletters
  • Visual Stories
  • Bonus annual gift subscription
  • Priority access to all new products and features

Rs. 8,474 /year

Subscribe
Or

Questions?

What kind of subscription plans do you offer?

We have three types of subscriptions
- Premium which gives you access to either the India or the Southeast Asia edition.
- Borderless which gives you complete access to The Ken across both editions
- Echelon which gives you complete access to The Ken across both editions along with a bonus gift subscription

What do I get if I subscribe?

The Premium edition gives you access to stories in that edition along with any five subscriber-only newsletters of your choice.

The Borderless and Echelon subscription gives you complete access to The Ken across editions and unlimited access to as many newsletters as you like.

What topics do you usually write about?

We publish sharp, original and reported stories on technology, business and healthcare. Our stories are forward-looking, analytical and directional — supported by data, visualisations and infographics. We use language and narrative that is accessible to even lay readers. And we optimise for quality over quantity, every single time.

Our specialised subscriber-only newsletters are written by our expert, award-winning journalists and cover a range of topics across finance, retail, clean energy, cryptocurrency, ed-tech and many more.

How many newsletters do you have?

We are constantly adding specialised subscriber-only newsletters all the time. All of these are written by our team of award-winning journalists on a specialised topic.

You can see the list of newsletters that we publish over here.

Does a Premium subscription to your Indian edition get me access to the Southeast Asia edition? Or vice-versa?

Afraid not. Each edition is separate with its own subscription plan. The India edition publishes stories focused on India. The Southeast Asia edition is focused on Southeast Asia. We may occasionally cross-publish stories from one edition to the other.

We recommend the Borderless or the Echelon Plan which will give you access to stories across both editions.

Do you have a mobile app?

Yes! We have a top-rated mobile app on both iOS and Android which allows you to read on-the-go and has some amazing features like the ability to bookmark stories, save on your device, dark mode, and much more. It’s really the best way to read The Ken.

Is there a free trial?

You can sign up for a free account to experience The Ken and understand our products better. We’ll send you some free stories and newsletters occasionally, and you can access our archive of previously published free stories. You can stay on the free account as long as you’d like.

The vast majority of our stories, articles and newsletters can be accessed only by a paid subscription.

Do you offer any discounts?

Sorry, no. Our journalism is funded completely by our subscribers. We believe that quality journalism comes at a price, and readers trust and pay us so that we can remain independent.

Do you offer refunds?

No. We allow you to sample our journalism for free before signing up, and after you do, we stand by its quality. But we do not offer refunds.

I am facing some trouble purchasing a subscription. What can I do?

Just write to us at [email protected] with details. We’ll help you out.

I have a few more questions. How can I reach out to you?

Sure. Just email us at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter.