Aadhaar's Dr Security and Mr Scale Problem

With security and privacy pulling it to one side and scale and utility to the other, Aadhaar will continue to remain conflicted. And from that conflict, breaches will keep emerging

The police case against Ola-owned Qarth Technologies is a legal band-aid on a technological wound

Aadhaar's core is well secured, and that's good

But it's periphery is increasingly looking like the Wild West

Almost all breaches till now have happened at the periphery. And the ones yet to happen too

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.

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

Others tell you what. We tell you the ‘So What?’

Read articles that decode the most significant shifts happening around business, technology, startups and healthcare. 1000+ articles for subscribers of the India edition. 150+ articles for subscribers of the Southeast Asia edition. Plus premium newsletters that help you make sense of the world around you.

So much journalism in India is superficial.

Articles are generic, almost cookie-cutter in their approach. And they don’t provide enough context on the issues they cover. The Ken is different. I don’t always agree with everything they say but I appreciate their commitment to publishing deeply reported narratives and investigations. Their reporters find new ways to analyze tech among other industries. And that’s always worth a read.

Sid Talwar / Co-Founder and Partner / Lightbox Venture Capital

As entrepreneurs, we thrive on being in the know at all times.

A personal subscription to The Ken was a no brainer. But as startup founders, this isn't enough. Team members also need to be in the know, for everyone handles customer-facing responsibilities and an ecosystem change that impacts customers also impacts us

Kiran Jonnalagadda / Co-founder / HasGeek and Internet Freedom Foundation