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<ul><li>The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has scrapped its plan to monitor and track citizens on social media — and has no plans of doing so in the future.</li><li>A tender floated by UIDAI in July 2018 invited social media agencies to employ a ‘social listening tool’ to monitor and address ‘negative sentiments’.</li><li>The proposal undermined Aadhar’s sole purpose of accommodating social welfare has been accused of violating the fundamental rights to privacy, freedom of speech, liberty and equality.</li></ul>The Unique Identification Authority of India (<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/indian-government-portal-leaks-8-9mn-aadhaar-details-again/articleshow/63924186.cms">UIDAI</a>), which manages the biometric identities of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nine-years-later-80-of-indians-are-still-not-convinced-the-worlds-largest-biometric-id-system-is-secure/articleshow/64406235.cms">more than a billion Indians</a>, is going back on its plan to monitor social media — for good. The Attorney General told the Supreme Court that UIDAI is withdrawing its tender and won’t be floating anything along the same lines in the future, according to <a href="https://barandbench.com/social-media-monitoring-tender-for-monitoring-agency-withdrawn-uidai-to-supreme-court/">Bar&amp;Bench</a>. The <a href="https://uidai.gov.in/images/tenders/RFPSocialMediaHQ-18072018.pdf">tender</a>, issued in July 2018, invited companies to help the apex agency employ a ‘social listening tool’ to track and monitor online conversations relating to Aadhaar. It was floated as UIDAI looking for a social media agency to manage its online platforms. The tender was then accused of violating the constitutional rights to privacy, equality, personal liberty and the freedom of speech. Here are all the reasons why it was a good call for UIDAI backtrack on its plan:

The agency behind the world's largest biometric identification system drops its plan to monitor online activity

The Delhi High Court Monday declined to order linking of social media accounts with Aadhaar, PAN or voter ID card for weeding out fake accounts, saying it would lead to data of genuine account holders, who are much more in number, going "unnecessarily" to foreign countries. A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar said linking of accounts with social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, with Aadhaar, PAN or any other identity document requires framing of policies or amendment in existing laws by the central government and this exercise cannot be done by the court. "Role of courts is to interpret the law as it is. We are not concerned with what the law ought to be," it said, adding that in exceptional cases where there is a gap in the law, the courts can step in. It said that in the instant case, linking of social media accounts with identity data like Aadhaar or PAN was a "crucial matter" which has to be appreciated by the central government and it cannot be treated as a "gap" which needs to be plugged by the court as it "would have far reaching consequences regarding data of genuine account holders". The bench said it was not inclined to issue any direction to the government as it is already deliberating on the Law Commission reports on the issue and disposed of the PIL seeking directions to the Centre to take steps for linking social media accounts with Aadhaar, PAN or voter ID card to weed out fake accounts. It however told the government to keep in mind that identity data of genuine account holders was also at stake and a "proper balance" has to be struck by it while taking a decision on the issue. In its order, the bench noted that according to BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, who had moved the plea, 20 per cent of the social media accounts were "fake, ghost or duplicate". "To weed out 20 per cent fake accounts all the data, including that of genuine account holders, will go to a foreign country. Majority of account holders are genuine. Therefore, if linkage is ordered by this court, there maybe a situation where data of genuine account holders will also go to foreign country, maybe unnecessarily," the court said. During the hearing, Upadhyay said something has to be done as anyone can create a fake account on social media of any person, including the judges, and through that medium wrong or controversial information can be spread. He had also alleged in his petition that fake social media accounts are used to propagate "fake and paid news" during elections. HMP SKV SA

No data localisation -- no linking Aadhaar for social media account verification

<ul><li>The Indian government’s new rules for social media platforms like <keyword id="6354576" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="facebook">Facebook</keyword> and Twitter mandates the ‘voluntary’ verification of users.</li><li>According to <keyword id="6355041" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="mozilla">Mozilla</keyword>, this could potentially put personal data at greater risk of being hacked.</li><li>Doosra, an Hyderabad-based startup, is offering a way, for users worried about their privacy, to create an alternative digital identity.</li></ul>Facebook, <keyword id="790242" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="WhatsApp">WhatsApp</keyword>, Twitter and other social media platforms have been asked to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/enterprise/news/mozilla-is-not-happy-with-indias-new-it-rules-claiming-there-arent-enough-checks-and-balances-in-place/articleshow/81308608.cms">verify the identity of their users</a> — this could be either through phone numbers or government-issued IDs like the Aadhaar card. Putting your number online is not just a risk in the face of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/news/a-scary-proposal-to-use-facial-recognition-and-ai-by-an-indian-state-has-experts-fuming/articleshow/80421935.cmshttps://www.businessinsider.in/news/a-scary-proposal-to-use-facial-recognition-and-ai-by-an-indian-state-has-experts-fuming/articleshow/80421935.cms">increasing government surveillance</a>. It is also about privacy and online safety since personal data can have in-real-life (IRL) consequences like being targeted by stalkers, trolls or people looking to hack into your bank account. “Where there is personal data, there is a great risk of hackers trying to steal it,” pointed out <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/enterprise/news/mozilla-is-not-happy-with-indias-new-it-rules-claiming-there-arent-enough-checks-and-balances-in-place/articleshow/81308608.cms">Mozilla</a> in a statement. An Indian startup based in Hyderabad called <a href="https://www.doosra.com/about-us">Doosra</a> has a possible solution. Instead of using your real number to sign up, use an alternative number to create a secondary digital identity. This doesn’t mean going out to buy a new SIM, but creating a second app-based ‘virtual’ number. “The only people that will have any kind of access to your primary number would be if we got an executive order from the official authorities,” <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/adityavuchi/?originalSubdomain=in">Aditya Vuchi</a>, founder and chief executive of Doosra told Business Insider. This means that if your social media handle is found to be a part of any activity, which violates Section 69 of the IT Act, the government or Supreme Court will first have to issue an order to the social media platform. If and once they discover that the mobile number given is a Doosra number, they will have to issue another order to Doosra in order to gain access to your primary number. The trouble with mobile numbers Mobile phone numbers started out as a simple communication tool. Their purpose was simply to allow your friends and loved ones to reach you no matter where you were. Over time, mobile phone numbers turned identifiers for business databases — a way for them to keep track of their customers — before turning into an all out marketing tool. The Indian government’s mandate to use phone numbers as a way of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/policy/news/indias-new-rules-for-facebook-whatsapp-and-other-social-media-platforms-explained-in-five-points/articleshow/81285658.cms">‘voluntary’ verification</a> — a know-your-customer process, of sorts — for accessing these online platforms poses a new threat. “This means that any message you share on WhatsApp, Facebook and other platforms that is re-shared, makes your number that much more accessible to various databases, leading to spam from real estate offers, insurance scams, stalkers and worse,” said Vuchi. Addressing the deficit of trust The six-month old Doosra is the first such service to be available in India. It is not that other such apps don’t exist — like 2ndLine, Hushed, and Burner — but you need an American or Canadian number in order to sign up for them. Doosra caters to numbers based out of India. You need your real number to sign up for the service, and it is not free with plans starting at ₹59 per month for essential services and ₹83 per month for the pro package. The Doosra number can be used to sign up for <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/whatsapp-signal-and-telegram-face-a-catch-22-situation-as-indias-new-social-media-rules-threaten-encryption/articleshow/81221070.cms">WhatsApp</a>, Twitter and others or given for Aadhaar, banking details and subscriptions. This is because all of these services require an OTP for verification and Doosra logs all the incoming messages on your <keyword id="10867302" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="secondary-number">secondary number</keyword>. “I bought a car very recently. And, throughout the entire cycle, neither the sales guy or the paperwork guy has access to my primary number. They only had access to my Doosra number,” said Vuchi. According to him, most people using the app so far are addressing a ‘deficit of trust’. They’re uncertain of how their number will be used — or misused — if they give it out to a third party, which is not surprising considering that when you go online to shop for insurance, at a portal like PolicyBazaar, they want you to share your number before you can even compare rates and figure out what you want. The startup did not share the exact number of subscribers it has so far, but Vuchi did disclose that Doosra has seen just shy of a million messages and around 25,000 business sender IDs have been detected. “We can’t see what the messages are, but we do know when businesses reach out to the consumers” he explained. The key clientele so far has been small business owners, sales professionals, and, in some cases, actors too. But with the walls closing in around a person’s digital identity and privacy turning into a luxury that very few can afford — Doosra expects business to boom in the future. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/razorpay-set-to-buyback-esops-worth-10-million-investors-sequoia-and-gic-will-be-the-buyers/articleshow/81324622.cms">Razorpay set to buyback ESOPs worth $10 million – investors Sequoia and GIC will be the buyers</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/enterprise/news/mozilla-is-not-happy-with-indias-new-it-rules-claiming-there-arent-enough-checks-and-balances-in-place/articleshow/81308608.cms">Mozilla is not happy with India's new IT rules claiming there aren't enough checks and balances in place</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/indian-companies-stand-to-lose-7-14-lakh-crore-to-climate-change-but-they-could-end-up-making-2-9-lakh-crore-too/articleshow/81306789.cms">Indian companies stand to lose ₹7.14 lakh crore to climate change — but they could end up making ₹2.9 lakh crore too</a>

This spam blocker may add a layer of anonymity to your social media presence while Twitter and Facebook are under pressure to verify their users

<ul><li>A new survey finds that 80% of Indians don’t trust the <keyword id="144117" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="AADHAAR">Aadhaar</keyword> card program.</li><li>Respondents agree that the government needs to take <keyword id="187124" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Data-Protection">data protection</keyword> more seriously. </li><li>The government had previously signed an affidavit for the Supreme Court, stating that the Aadhaar database can neither be hacked nor breached.</li></ul>The Aadhaar card scheme, a 12-digit unique identity number for residents in India, has been embroiled in controversy since its initiation in 2009. Nine years down the line, citizens still don’t <a href="https://cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/digital-security/80-people-concerned-about-aadhaar-data-security-study/64383641">trust</a> the world’s <a href="https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/aadhaar-worlds-largest-id-database-exposed-by-india-government-errors/64175448">largest</a> biometric ID system. A survey conducted by Velocity MR, a market research and analysis company, concluded that eight out of 10 respondents were concerned about the security of their Aadhar data and felt the government should be more proactive about data protection. This comes from taking 5,800 respondents into consideration, across 8 tier-1 cities in India, including the National Capital Region. The Aadhaar conundrum Headlines that call the security of Aadhaar into the question rear their head every few months. Regardless of whether it’s a <a href="https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/an-online-researcher-hacked-into-aadhaar-s-official-android-app-to-show-how-poorly-it-s-secured-337425.html">French researcher</a> or <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/uidai-trashes-zdnet-report-refutes-aadhaar-data-leak-claim-by-delhi-researcher/articleshow/63446024.cms">ZDNet</a>, the issue lies with the government’s reiterations of the Aadhaar system being ‘<a href="https://www.troyhunt.com/is-indias-aadhaar-system-really-hack-proof-assessing-a-publicly-observable-security-posture/">hack-proof</a>’. The Unique Identification Authority of India (<keyword id="6355252" type="DEFINITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="uidai">UIDAI</keyword>), the government agency behind Aadhaar cards has <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/aadhaar-data-is-fully-safe-uidai/articleshow/61725239.cms">said</a>, “The Aadhaar data, including biometric information, is fully safe and secure.” Even the government filed an <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/india/government-files-affidavit-in-aadhaar-case-claims-it-cannot-be-hacked-or-breached-supreme-court-to-hear-case-today-4190835.html">affidavit</a> with the Supreme Court in lieu of the Aadhaar case, that claimed that the data collected through the system cannot be breached or hacked. Security in itself is not a zero-sum game. Technology evolves at such velocity that safeguards becoming obsolete is always a concern, while also being inevitable. That being said, a system cannot be completely secure, it can only be sufficiently prepared. The Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal goes a long way in proving the same. It’s one of reasons why the conversation has veered from obtaining consent to getting ‘<a href="https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/consent/what-is-valid-consent/">valid’ </a>consent. The same survey, when asking about Facebook usage, found that 1-in-3 users are going to reduce the amount of information they share on the social networking platform, though they aren’t ready to leave it altogether. Because, let’s be honest, there’s always a weak link or a point of vulnerability. The question is, how long will it be before someone finds it.

Nine years later, 80% of Indians are still not convinced the world’s largest biometric ID system is secure

With over a billion people in the country, it's always been difficult to gauge the public's mood in <keyword id="3658" type="COUNTRY" weightage="20" keywordseo="India">India</keyword>, as far as elections are concerned. Take the 2014 elections for instance. While everyone had an inkling that the BJP would take the cake, no one expected the sweeping victory the party pulled off. But what if you could marry voting with one of the fastest growing sectors in the country? Would that help gauge the public's reactions better? An app called Neta aims to do just that. Created by Pratham Mittal, a Wharton alumnus, the app lets you "review" politicians, just like you do Uber drivers. The idea is to create a ‘Zomato of politicians’. Mittal argues that ratings on apps like Zomato and Yelp are major drivers for service quality in a restaurant, just like Uber drivers care about the rating you give to them. So, why shouldn't politicians? Mittal and his team have created a database of constituencies in the country, including the politicians who are competing from these places. After signing up, users can find their constituency using the pin code and cast a vote for a neta (Hindi for politician). While this is not an official vote, it helps gauge what users in a particular area think of their leaders. The votes can be changed at will, which means if a politician isn't performing after an election, the public can change their vote. 
	
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(<keyword id="6579226" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="neta-app">Neta app</keyword>) Mittal says he wants the app to be a watchdog for politicians in the country. The votes are displayed in the form of a leaderboard, that ranks politicians based on the votes they receive. There's also a separate area for discussions and polls. The app allows users to run polls and add issues in their area. That gets even more feedback from users, providing better insight into what's happening on the ground. In the 2014 elections, 540 million Indians voted in the central elections. That was 66.4% of the electorate, up 8.4% from the 58% turnout in the 2009 elections. Yet, India doesn't have an easy method to gauge the public's mood. Once the app is launched across the country, Mittal says he can take the data to political parties and sell it to them. His app has 100,000 downloads on the Play Store right now, most of which were acquired during the recent Karnataka elections. It can also be accessed through the web, while Mittal's team also sends mass WhatsApp messages to people and makes IVR-driven calls to get votes from users. In fact, Mittal claims that through the data in his app, he was able to predict the eventually hung assembly beforehand. He says he has received over 2.5 million votes on the platform so far, despite only being in Ajmer, Alwar and Karnataka. Fake votes While that's an impressive number, there seems to be a very real chance of fake votes being cast. To battle that, the app takes the user's phone number when signing up. It uses this to tap into telecom operators' databases and get your name. It then tallies this to voter databases and decides which constituency you belong to. There's also Aadhaar. Since most numbers today are being attached to Aadhaar cards, the app taps into the UIDAI's APIs to verify users using their Aadhaar numbers. It doesn't actually see your Aadhaar number here but uses the mobile number and name to verify what constituency you belong to. Mittal says that his app will still have a 4% margin for error, but argues that this margin won't matter when it's reaching millions of users. What's the end game? While Mittal's goal is to make his app a watchdog, he has business opportunities in the analytics he can sell to political parties. But more importantly, he wants to sell this data to media outlets, making him a direct competitor to election research firms like Cvoter, Today's Chanakya and more. Further, Mittal says that he can also access user data if he wants to, but he's wary of doing so in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He says he can extrapolate caste and religion from a person's name, while data about birth and some other information can be obtained from the election commission. Having started less than six months ago, this is a long-term plan. The app is yet to launch in all cities, though databases are being built for all of them. The hook here is in transparency, the fact that the votes come from real users. Mittal’s users aren’t obtained from Facebook ads alone, he says he sends real people down to villages etc. to put the app directly on people’s phones.

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The agency behind the world's largest biometric identification system drops its plan to monitor online activity

Prabhjote Gill

No data localisation -- no linking Aadhaar for social media account verification

PTI

This spam blocker may add a layer of anonymity to your social media presence while Twitter and Facebook are under pressure to verify their users

Prabhjote Gill

Nine years later, 80% of Indians are still not convinced the world’s largest biometric ID system is secure

Prabhjote Gill

This app lets you 'review' politicians in India

Prasid Banerjee

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