Aadhaar is an excellent security question !!!!

Despite the hype and hoopla about aadhaar and its dangers, I would still recommend the government to expand its role to two new applications. One for Aadhaar linking of mobile connections and other for aadhaar linking of Voter IDs.

But using it to force kids to enroll and/or deny mid day meals is taking it to the extreme. That kids do not like to eat more than 60 grams per day of cooked food in govt schools is the real lament.

Amid all this.... we are definitely missing the woods for the bushes. Aadhaar can serve as an excellent way of restoring someone access to his or her online account/digital identity. Aadhaar can easily check if the person authenticating is alive or not. This and the fact that aadhaar authentication relies on biometrics which does not change much over the life of a person, may be used as a final adjudication of whether the person is who he/she claims to be.

If a person is aadhaar authenticated and immediately is given an option to set a password for his account in any website/service or app, then subsequent aadhaar authentication might just be possible with passwords instead of biometrics. Everyone by now would have learnt about the biometric lock that aadhaar(UIDAI) has come up for the benefit of all those who would not like their biometric authentication without their consent. The problem with biometric locking is that it just shuts out all future biometric authentications and would need biometric authentication itself to unlock the lock.

Many businesses are already game for using aadhaar for a variety of services. Microsoft, shaadi.com to name a few are already using it.

Majority of the Indian population being illiterate may not be able to remember passwords and prove who they are to any of the e-services. But a minority of the people might be willing to lock their biometrics and opt for a password-instead-of-aadhaar-auth(or whatever you may call it) kind of system.

Now the aadhaar authentication system is built on a black box which does only authentications. UIDAI is least interested in what you are authenticating for. The authentication-user-agency asking for your biometrics may use your biometrics only once according to Aadhaar bill passed recently. But nothing stops them from illegitimately storing the biometrics and misusing it at a later date.

So the importance of biometric lock is very significant. Some activists have even suggested biometric locking by default for all aadhaar holders. In this context password-instead-of-aadhaar-auth might be of significant use for the upwardly mobile.

The least the government could do is to start a service for storing the password-instead-of-aadhaar-auth as an all encompassing social security key. A key which opens the gates for someones social benefits while protecting them from unnecessary biometric authentications.

If the government is to trust a mere password instead of full blown authentication, it has to be sure that the person is literate and has made an informed choice of using the password-instead-of-aadhaar-auth.

The India stack has a consent mechanism which allows biometric authentications from stored files but there is very little clarity on this right now.

Since several years UIDAI has been trying to convince biometric device suppliers to make use of keys supplied by the UIDAI. This feature would allow UIDAI to disable any biometric device or group of such devices should it suspect that they are being misused.

The future is all bright for the aadhaar and it remains to be seen how much of this path breaking technology sees uptake across the world. For Indians it has already become their AADHAAR(Support).