One of the main fears about the use of biometric data in use in biometric ID systems, is what happens when security fails, from various methods such as hacking? The world’s largest biometric ID system, Aadhaar, operated by the Indian government, has 1.3 billion people in its system. But a hacker breached the system and obtained the sensitive personal data of 815 million Indian citizens. The hacking made use of data from testing for Covid-19 carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research. The stolen data is now for sale, and may already have been sold, unless the Indian police got to him first.
Bill Gates was in favour of the Aadhaar system when it was first put up, and said that he could see no security or privacy issues arising. Well, he certainly got that one wrong, drastically wrong.
