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Comment by modi15 | Hacker News Reader

I for one, have no idea what this really means. Can anyone explain why this ruling is not totally useless ?

Currently, Indian govt is making it mandatory for everyone to have AADHAR card(enrolment of which requires biometric scan) for basic services like opening bank account, provident fund, filing income tax returns etc, making it necessary for everyone to enroll for AADHAR. This judgement will be used for removal of AADHAR requirement.

Biometric is just stronger identity. This can be done in a weaker way using Passport/PAN card.

Does Right to Privacy mean that the govt. cannot identify individuals ? How does it then provide differential services ?

Thats moot unless every significant access point has a means and financial viability to verify the biometrics.

Even with such existing 'weaker' identities we are nowhere close to the quality of service that such 'weak' identies can support. Lets address the problem and not divert the issue with "shiny tech... look a squirrel". I would be more sympathetic if we are already in the ballpark of the quality of service that these 'weak' identities can support and we are getting bottlenecked there.

To put it charitably, with Aadhaar we are optimizing something that is not the bottlneck.

Right to privacy here mean, govt cannot force citizens to give up their biometric for simple things like creation of bank accounts. Till now, PAN card was the only identification needed.

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