Aadhaar case: UIDAI's documents show CEO's attempts to authenticate failed one out of five times

tech2 News StaffMar 29, 2018 20:38:34 IST

As a part of the ongoing battle between petitioners and the UIDAI, documents recently submitted by Aadhaar CEO, Ajay Bhushan Pandey have an interesting revelation that could pose a problem for the organisation's case in the Supreme Court.

Representational image. AFP

A report by The Quint, tells us how the document submitted by the Aadhaar CEO indicate how his own attempts at authentication have failed 19 percent of the time.

The records submitted include supporting documents, including a record of all the attempts to authenticate his own Aadhaar identity between 1 November 2017 till March 2018.

According to the proofs submitted, there were 26 authentication attempts in all (as per the log) during the above mentioned time frame. One came from a telecom company, 8 others from two different banks where the remaining 17 were related to the UIDAI EKYC for internal monitoring and services.

Five out of the above mentioned 26 attempts resulted in failure which amounts to 19.2 percent of the all attempts during this period, which is not very assuring.

Adding fuel to the fire, the documents also reveal that only one of those 26 authentication attempts was done using the much talked about biometric authentication mode. The same request according to those records also failed with an error code 330, which according to the UIDAI's website reads as "Biometrics locked by Aadhaar holder."

The knowledge that the CEO of UIDAI keeps his biometric details locked (they cannot be used by anyone for Aadhaar authentication) does raise doubts about the ongoing case by petitioners against the Aadhaar biometric authentication system.

It points one too many fingers at a system that appears to be a violation of privacy, and risks involved if the authentication fails because it results in the exclusion of benefits for many.

With that said, the submitted documents also reveal that authentication requests made by Pandey at the same private sector bank using the OTP route also failed showing an error code 400 which reads "OTP validation failed" as per the UIDAI website.

The UIDAI mentions that the problem with OTP validation was due to an incorrectly entered PIN.

According to the UIDAI, the claims aren't really an issue since alternative forms of verification can be used if biometrics do not work.

Click here to read about the ongoing Aadhaar Hearings in the Supreme Court.