UIDAI Authentication data analysis

A recent story on TOI quotes the affidavit that UIDAI filed in the supreme court that there were 1216.8 crore authentications done by Aadhaar so far, which proves that the system is working.

This of course is an obvious misrepresentation since UIDAI never publishes failures but just the total count.

It also does not publish the breakup between various types of authentication such as OTP, biometric and demographic authentication. While OTP and biometric authentication require resident participation, demographic authentication does not. It can be best thought of as a search functionality.

The total number of authentications as on October 2016 is about 331 crores but it is 1255 crores on November 2017, which is an increase of 924 crores (3X increase). Demographic authentication alone accounts for 231 crores and this is because of the mandatory PAN, Sim, Bank linkage.

Since demographic authentication does not require the consent of the resident, most likely this is inorganic seeding in action.

So far Aadhaar PAN Linkage stands at 13.28 Crores.

However the breakup for the Income Tax department (AUA) is as follows:

Hence almost 11.08 crore PANs were linked by the Income Tax department using data it had obtained through previous returns or other sources and only 2.20 crore were linked via explicit consent through OTP.

There are two possible explanations for the more than normal failure rates.

The other explanation is that users were simply told that the eKYC authentication failed but the repeated attempt was used to open a payment bank account as reported by medianama.

Irrespective of the explanations, it is obvious that biometric failure rates for fingerprints are high and may be within the normal range of 12 to 20% for the government to consider switching to a combination of OTP and demographic authentication.

UIDAI in it’s affidavit has claimed in the supreme court the following:

Given the analysis so far, this is obviously a lie as explained below:

Hopefully the lawyers who argue for the petitioners will bring this to the court’s notice.

Related posts:

Leadership has always been challenging, but the future of work will bring fresh challenges to future leaders. Over the next decade, leaders will have to face obstacles and challenges not faced by…

Have you heard the adage “It’s better to give than to receive?” This is a lesson that one suburban Chicago middle school girl has taken to heart following an outstanding and eye-opening experience as…

Giving a eulogy at the service of a loved one can be cathartic and can allow you to heal, so it is something to consider. Here are some tips that can help you prepare the eulogy.