Mozilla Pens Open Letter Saying Aadhaar Can Become a Privacy Disaster

Since Indian Government launched Aadhaar, many privacy organizations in the world are concerned about the digital security of Indian citizens, and rightly so. With Indian governments push to connect every other service including banking and finances, taxation services, and mobile numbers to a person's Aadhaar ID, the program basically turns into a single point of failure.

Mozilla Open Letter

That's why many citizens and privacy organizations are concerned about the security risks associated with such a system, and Mozilla is the latest company to join the fray. Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser is arguing that Aadhaar has the potential to become a privacy disaster.

Mozilla'south Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker wrote an open letter of the alphabet to Justice Srikrishna and the Members of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Applied science Commission of Experts to convey the company's concern. In the letter, Baker wrote,

"Data protection is a critical tool for guaranteeing fundamental rights of privacy. It is specially of import today as Aadhaar is being driven deeper into all aspects of life. Digital identity tin bring many benefits, but it can also become a surveillance and privacy disaster."

The letter of the alphabet farther says stiff policies are needed for protecting an individual's digital privacy.

"Recently, a private citizen was able to purchase access to all of the demographic data in the Aadhaar database for just 500 rupees. At that place have been countless leaks, security incidents, and instances where private Aadhaar data has been published online."

While the government of Bharat is pushing Aadhaar linkage to every possible service, the lack of information protection laws will hurt Indian citizens. In the letter Mozilla appreciates the steps taken by the team pb by Justice Srikrishna to suggest stricter laws, yet, information technology also said that the company is concerned nearly several missing protections.

For i, the electric current proposal exempts biometric info from the definition of sensitive personal information, something which must especially be protected. The commission besides exempts unabridged government agencies from any accountability and legal restrictions on how user information may exist accessed and processed. This gives agencies the power to access and even misuse confidential Aadhaar information without any proper cause.

With its open alphabetic character that the visitor published in the Feb 9 edition of The Hindustan Times, Mozilla wants to create awareness nigh Aadhaar information security challenges and urge the government to create stricter digital identity protection laws.