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.