Finger print, iris data in Aadhaar are safe, secure: Prasad

New Delhi: Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today that finger print and iris data stored in the Aadhaar system are safe and secure and cannot be breached even by “billions of efforts”.

Speaking at an event of Delhi School of Economics, he showed his Aadhaar card to audiences and said: “The (Aadhaar) system contains my finger print and iris kept in safe and secure encrypted form which cannot be broken even by billions of efforts. That is an Indian technology.”

The comments from Prasad come at a time when there have been reports of alleged data breach of Aadhaar subscribers. The minister said that World Bank has appreciated the Aadhaar technology for inclusion which costs 63.66₹ (Rs 63.66) only but saved Rs 57,000 crore of public money.

“Indian technology is today finding resonance. Poor are very happy with Aadhaar,” Prasad said. He said that by linking teachers with Aadhaar around 80,000 fake teachers have been identified by the government. Besides, 80 crore bank accounts have been linked with Aadhaar.

“While we respect data privacy, it should be done, but under the garb of privacy you cannot kill innovation,” Prasad said. Based on data analysis, the government was able to detect that post-demonetisation 1.5 lakh people deposited 5 lakh crore, and 17,000 companies deposited Rs 35,000 crore out of Rs 14 lakh crore cash that flowed into banks, he said, adding that it also struck out over 2.5 lakh companies which operated only during the period of demonetisation.

According to the official data, 17.73 lakh suspicious cases involving Rs 3.68 trillion (Rs 3.68 lakh crore) have been identified by taxmen in 23.22 lakh bank accounts post demonetisation. Responses from 11.8 lakh people for 16.92 lakh bank accounts had been received by the department online.

The tax department has combed as many as 18 lakh people who had deposited junked Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes of over Rs 2.5 lakh each post demonetisation. Prasad said that data should be made available for innovation and utility but data should be anonymous.

He appreciated Delhi University for its plan to set-up separate cyber security department and said that India is going to become hub of low cost cyber security products.