The Electronics and IT Ministry late on September 25 took on a report from Moody’s Investors Service that raised questions about the efficacy of Aadhaar and asserted that there have been no breaches reported from the unique ID system’s database till date to dismiss concerns about security and privacy in a centralised system.
In a note titled “Aadhaar, the most trusted digital ID in the world — Moody’s Investors Service opinions baseless” , the Ministry said a number of international agencies, including the IMF and the World Bank, have lauded Aadhaar and several nations have also engaged with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to understand how they may deploy similar digital ID systems. Moreover, it emphasised that over a billion Indians have also expressed their trust in Aadhaar by using it to authenticate themselves “over 100 billion times”.
In a report last Saturday, the global rating agency had said that Aadhaar’s biometric authentication systems often results in “service denials” for users and are unreliable in hot and humid conditions. The agency had also red-flagged security and privacy risks to users of such centralised systems where a single entity such as a government electoral roll “controls and manages a user’s identifying credentials and their access to online resources”.
