How The UIDAI Built The Aadhaar Database, And Created A Security Mess In The Process

Friday, 28 September 2018Huffpost

Lakhs of untrained, poorly supervised people helped create the world’s largest biometric database. What happened when this access was taken away from them?

JALANDHAR, Punjab — On Wednesday, hours after the Supreme Court upheldthe constitutionality of Aadhaar, India's controversial biometric identity project, WhatsApp groups populated by hundreds of young men sitting in rickety computer kiosks installed in villages, cities and hamlets across the country were abuzz with activity.

A year ago, these men with their battered laptops, matchbox-sized biometric scanners and GPS dongles, were authorised Aadhaar-enrolment operators—the most visible sign of India's quest to capture the fingerprints, iris scans and personal details of over a billion citizens into a vast, centralised database. Some worked for private enrolment companies, others had set themselves up as "village-level entrepreneurs" (VLEs) under a government scheme.

Credit by - Huffpost

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