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UIDAI CEO Gave The Supreme Court His Aadhaar Logs, Now Twitter Knows Everything About Him

Read the thread to know more about Pandey's life.
Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of UIDAI.
Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of UIDAI.

Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the agency that implements India's controversial Aadhaar project, shared his authentication logs with the Constitutional bench of the Supreme Court last week.

His aim, ostensibly, was to show how Aadhaar incorporates "privacy by design", to quote the accompanying power-point presentation.

It wasn't long before Aadhaar critics on Twitter poured through his logs and proved just the opposite.

Cybersecurity analyst and software developer, Anand Venkatanarayanan, revealed how just looking at six months worth of authentication data could offer clues to Pandey's physical movements, his phone service provider, the banks where he has his accounts, and even his daily schedule.

Two failed attempts to link his ICICI bank account to his Aadhaar at midnight on Republic Day, for instance, suggests seeding bank accounts with Aadhaar is giving the UIDAI CEO sleepless nights as well.

Other gems include the fact that only one transaction in the past six months was authorised using his biometrics. The transaction, which was conducted at IDFC bank a day before the Court re-convened to discuss the Aadhaar matter, failed.

Privacy advocates have long maintained that seeding Aadhaar with other forms of identification allows for the creation of detailed databases that can be used to track citizens.

Read the thread to know more about Pandey's life.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.