Aadhaar data leak | FIR should be registered against UIDAI, not journalist: Edward Snowden

Four days after criticising governments from across the world for accessing private lives of a country's citizens, US whistleblower Edward Snowden on Tuesday strongly criticised the FIR that was registered against a journalist from The Tribue over her article that exposed loopholes in the UIDAI security, which made it easy for everyone to access Aadhaar data.

Taking to Twitter, Snowden said, "The journalists exposing the #Aadhaar breach deserve an award, not an investigation. If the government were truly concerned for justice, they would be reforming the policies that destroyed the privacy of a billion Indians. Want to arrest those responsible? They are called @UIDAI," Snowden tweeted.

Edward Snowden

✔@Snowden

The journalists exposing the #Aadhaar breach deserve an award, not an investigation. If the government were truly concerned for justice, they would be reforming the policies that destroyed the privacy of a billion Indians. Want to arrest those responsible? They are called @UIDAI. https://twitter.com/rahulkanwal/status/949847121884262401 …

3:42 AM - Jan 9, 2018

Last Friday, Snowden said that the Aadhaar database conceived and introduced by the Indian government can also be misused and abused. Retweeting CBS journalist Zack Whittaker's response on a BuzzFeed report on the breach of Aadhaar database in India, Snowden said, "It is the natural tendency of government to desire perfect records of private lives. History shows that no matter the laws, the result is abuse."

Earlier, UIDAI said that in the recent case of The Tribune's report in which an FIR is filed, an impression is being created in media that UIDAI is targeting the media or whistleblowers or "shooting the messenger". “This is not at all true. This is a case in which even though there was no breach of Aadhaar biometric database, because UIDAI takes every criminal violation seriously, it is for the act of unauthorized access, criminal proceedings have been initiated. UIDAI respects Free Speech including the Freedom of Press and Media.. However, UIDAI's act of filing an FIR with full details of the incident should not be viewed as UIDAI targeting the media or the whistle-blowers or "shooting the messenger".

Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also on Monday had tweeted that an FIR had been registered against unknown people, and added that he had spoken to the UIDAI to seek the assistance of The Tribune to nab the actual culprits.

In March 2017, the Delhi police registered what is possibly the first case filed under the Aadhaar Act after two separate persons were “found having the same parameters of biometric information”. The FIR was filed against a CNN-News 18 journalist after the channel aired a segment showing that it was possible to obtain two separate Aadhaar enrollment numbers with the same set of biometrics. The second person against whom an FIR was registered was Skoch group chairman Sameer Kochhar who posted a video and blog post showing that the biometric identification system could possibly be vulnerable against replay attacks.