Comment:
I find it quite preposterous that the perpetrators of this wildly insecure scheme are now putting the onus on the citizen to protect the data which has been forcibly collected and retained by them -- that is the only interpretation I can give to their advice "Lock your Aadhaar number to prevent misuse"!
All this while The FM along with Sri Nandan Nilekani and his cronies have been bragging about the sophisticated safety features using advanced encryption technology to prevent unauthorised access. Now they have devised a scheme for locking and unlocking the data through mobile phones which are by nature absolutely insecure despite all the mumbo-jumbo about OTP!
It is very easy for them to claim that the aadhaar data was stolen because it was not 'locked' by the victim citizen.
It appears that only those who are savvy with smart phones can use this dubious facility (which automatically excludes idiots like me). I am thinking of a semi-literate villager jostling in a queue trying to collect her monthly ration, and the shopkeeper saying she must unlock her aadhaar data for authentication before any rice can be issued (and hopefully she should remember to lock it again later). She already has her hands full -- the baby can't be left alone in the hut during her three hours in the open-air queue, besides a sack and bags for the provisions, and of course a tattered plastic cover containing an aadhaar card and a 'smart phone' which only occasionally gets blessed with connectivity. How will she negotiate all this?
At the other end of the scale, even with a post-graduate degree in engineering I will probably face insurmountable problems trying withdraw money from my own bank savings if everything has to be done through inscrutable screen commands! I have never used a credit card, whereas the debit which was issued by default has been used only for drawing urgently required money from ATMs outside banking hours, except for precisely FOUR occasions for purchases during Nov-Dec 2016 when cash was just not available at banks and ATMs. I know I am hopelessly old-fashioned and unfit to live in today's world.
I can keep rambling and cribbing like this endlessly, but to no purpose, and I'm probably getting incoherent already because I tend to get worked up about such things! So let me stop with that. I doubt if there's anything new for you in whatever I have stated above. Anyway I'm glad to note that you have taken up this battle seriously.
Someone pointed out to me recently that our PM has killed more people (waiting in ATM queues, starvation due to withdrawal of benefits caused by Aadhaar identification glitches, etc) than the terrorists.
Regards,
(Name witheld on Request)