Making a strong pitch before the five judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Tuesday, UIDAI CEO AB Pandey said that online authentication such as Aadhaar is a safer and secure mode of authentication.

Justice AK Sikri, one of the five judges, asked the CEO if the authentication logs are kept with the authentication or requesting entity and the nature of data. The CEO said that details except biometrics are kept with the agencies.

The auditing of authentication user agencies (AUAs), and requesting agencies, is done by the UIDAI itself or an appointed agency to ensure smooth functioning of the system, Pandey said.

While giving a power-point presentation on Aadhaar to the bench, Pandey enumerated reasons why Aadhaar online authentication is a better technology than smart cards. He said changing encryption kept on a smart card from time to time is not possible.

It is not wise to store too much of information on smart cards. Moreover, the replacement of smart card with a better technology in the future is a huge responsibility, he said. 

If Aadhaar is lost, there's no identity theft. The same cannot be said of smart cards, he said. He claimed that although surveillance is not possible with CIDR as silos are not merged, it is possible by smart cards by merging databases. In case of smart cards, an individual can have multiple cards with different identities and same biometrics, the CEO said.

Pandey assured the apex court that the UIDAI hasn't shared data with any other agency. He said the government can make further regulations if there are any concerns related to the security and privacy of the Aadhaar ecosystem.

He said that the technology and architecture board reviews the technology of Aadhaar. The security is an ongoing challenge and we need to keep upgrading it, he said.