Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said on Thursday that the Supreme Court was concerned whether personal data gleaned for Aadhaar would be used for surveillance which treats citizens as commercially saleable commodities.
Justice Chandrachud, who is part of the five-judge Aadhaar Bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, said surveillance did not mean mere physical shadowing of citizens. Surveillance in the digital age means aggregating personal data of citizens to sell this information in the commercial market.
Pointing to recent incidents like the Cambridge Analytica controversy and the recent statements made by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Justice Chandrachud said private information of individuals could be used as commercially saleable commodities.
“The 1.3 billion Indians may be poor, but we are a goldmine of commercial information,” Justice Chandrachud said.
‘Why verify again?’
Earlier in the hearing, Justice A.K. Sikri questioned why existing bank account holders should be subjected to “re-verification” of their identities through their Aadhaars.
“If a person has started a bank account in 2012. His identity was verified as per the law of that time. Now you say, he has to re-prove that he is he and not somebody else. Is it lawful at all to do that?” Justice Sikri asked.
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, for RBI, responded that identity verification during the pre-Aadhaar years were done on various basis like passports, ration cards or even through an introducer. “But over the years, more problems have emanated. The issue of spurious identities have increased. Therefore, we need to re-verify identities,” Mr. Dwivedi said.
Justice Sikri said that if a person does not want to take an Aadhaar, he is left with two options, that is, forgo the money in his account or close the bank account.
“If I do not get Aadhaar, you are saying that you will deprive me of my property. The only option left for me is to close the account. There is no choice left for me,” Justice Sikri said.
