MUMBAI--Researchers and journalists who have identified loopholes in India's massive national identity card project have said they have been slapped with criminal cases or harassed by government agencies because of their work.
Last month, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the semi-government body responsible for the national identity project, called Aadhaar, or "Basis", filed a criminal case against the Tribune newspaper for publishing a story that said access to the card's database could be bought for 500 rupees ($7.82).
Reuters spoke to eight additional researchers, activists and journalists who have complained of being harassed after writing about Aadhaar. They said UIDAI and other government agencies were extremely sensitive to criticism of the Aadhaar programme.
Aadhaar is a biometric identification card that is becoming integral to the digitisation of India's economy, with over 1.1 billion users and the world's biggest database. Indians have been asked to furnish their Aadhaar numbers for a host of transactions including accessing bank accounts, paying taxes, receiving subsidies, acquiring a mobile number, settling a property deal and registering a marriage.
The Tribune said one of its reporters purchased access to a portal that could provide data linked to any Aadhaar cardholder. The UIDAI complaint, filed with the police cyber cell in the capital, New Delhi, accused the newspaper, the reporter, and others of cheating by impersonation, forgery and unauthorised access to a computer network.
Media associations sharply criticised the action - the Editors Guild of India said UIDAI's move was "clearly meant to browbeat a journalist whose story was of great public interest. It is unfair, unjustified and a direct attack on the freedom of the press."
In response, the agency said "an impression was being created in media that UIDAI is targeting the media or whistleblowers or shooting the messenger."
"That is not at all true. It is for the act of unauthorised access, criminal proceedings have been launched," it said in a statement.
Osama Manzar, the director of the Digital Empowerment Foundation, a New Delhi-based NGO, called the government's prickliness "a clear sign that rather than it wanting to learn how to make Aadhaar a tool of empowerment, it actually wants to use it as a coercive tool of disempowerment."
Last May, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), an independent Indian advocacy group, published a report that government websites had inadvertently leaked several million identification numbers from the project. UIDAI sent the CIS a legal notice within days, said Srinivas Kodali, one of the authors of the report. The notice alleged that some of the data cited in the report would only be available if the site had been accessed illegally. The UIDAI wrote that the people involved had to be "brought to justice."
