Can the UIDAI be used for religious profiling or to collect data about an individual’s spending habits? What about identity theft?

According to UIDAI authorities, the structure of the database is such that you cannot query it; it is like a black box. So, you cannot ask it, for instance, to give you all the names ending with Jain along with their addresses. Nor can you ask it for all the names of individuals residing in an area with a particular pincode. Since all that the database has is a name, sex, age, address, fingerprints, photograph and an iris-scan, there is no question of having information about spending habits. Since the database has been developed to only answer a simple yes/no, the UIDAI authorities claim identity theft is not possible.

Sponsoring a ‘Project GetMyIris’, with a reward of say a million dollars to a person who can hack into the system, to get your biometrics including the iris details, wouldn’t be a bad idea to set everyone’s hearts at ease...
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