Aadhaar data leak can influence election results, says Supreme Court

Amid the controversy of alleged Facebook data leak by Cambridge Analytica to support a political party during US elections, the Supreme Court on Tuesday said that Aadhar data leak can influence outcome of election results.

Justice DY Chandrachud, who is part of a five-judge bench of the Apex Court hearing a clutch of 27 petitions that questioned the validity of Aadhaar, flagged privacy issues and data leak said, “The real apprehension is the data available can influence the electoral outcome.”

The Apex Court last week had expressed concerns over possible misuse of data 1.3 billion Indians.

The focus on illegal usage of data by third parties has become a concern in the country after the Facebook data misuse.

The Supreme Court asked the UIDAI for an account of its data protection steps and said, “The problems are not symptomatic but real.”

Questioning UIDAI about ‘nature of safeguards’ in absence of a data protection law, Justice Chandrachud said, “We can’t have a blinkered view of reality reality, because we are going to law down a law which will affect the future.”