Linking Aadhaar with social media or ending encryption is counterproductive

The need of the hour is sustained research and development of privacy protecting surveillance mechanisms

Should Aadhaar be used as KYC for social media accounts? We have recently seen a debate on this question with even the courts hearing arguments in favour and against such a move. The case began in Madras High Court and later Facebook moved the SC seeking transfer of the petition to the Apex court. The original petition was filed in July, 2018 and sought linking of Aadhaar numbers with user accounts to further traceability of messages.

Before we try and answer this question, we need to first understand the differences between the  different types of data on social media and