There are certain red lines where right to privacy cannot be breached, legal experts said on Saturday as they stressed that protecting privacy is must for safeguarding one's liberty.
They were also of the opinion that the Supreme Court judgment making Aadhaar mandatory for disbursement of benefits and subsidies failed to achieve much.
The entire Aadhaar database is based on self-certification as people can change their personal information online and no one verifies it, senior Supreme Court advocate Shyam Diwan said.
"We cannot allow India to become a surveillance state. A surveillance society is completely antithetical to the working and functioning of a democracy," said Diwan, who was one of the lawyers who represented the petitioners before a 9-member bench of the apex court on right to privacy as a fundamental right.
He was speaking on "After the Aadhar judgement: Do individuals have right to privacy" on the second day of Difficult Dialogues, an annual forum that examines issues of contemporary relevance in South Asia, at the International Centre Goa here.
He said "we are creating a database that is of very little value".
He added, "If you want to protect your liberty, you have to protect your privacy. Understanding of privacy after this judgment is very serious."
On the privacy of health data, Sengupta said, "Health information is sensitive according to the law and can be shared only with the explicit consent of the individual. It is a different matter that the state is abusing its understanding of privacy to derive information."