India’s supreme court has upheld the legality of the government’s Aadhaar system, the world’s largest biometric database containing the personal information of more than a billion Indians.
The five-judge bench of India’s top court said the benefits of the system outweighed the risks to privacy but laid down stringent new limits on how Aadhaar information could be used.
Providing Aadhaar details cannot be compulsory for opening a bank account, establishing a mobile phone connection or enrolling a child in school, the court’s majority opinion said.
But it permitted the government to demand a 12-digit Aadhaar number when citizens are registering tax file numbers or filing annual returns.
It also struck down a so-called “national security exception” that allowed investigative agencies to access a person’s data without a warrant in special circumstances.
The decision on Wednesday settles several major questions that have hung over the Aadhaar in the decade since it was first proposed by the previous Congress government and then vastly expanded by current prime minister Narendra Modi.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
