Fifty-four civil society groups and more than 200 individuals have issued a strong open letter warning against exporting Aadhaar-like biometric ID systems to other countries. They said, “We, concerned Indian citizens and organisations, are alarmed to note that efforts are being made to promote biometric identity systems similar to Aadhaar in other countries.” Signatories include the Internet Freedom Foundation, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, JNU Students Union, Safai Karmachari Andolan, and People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). Individuals like former Amnesty International India chair Aakar Patel, activist Jean Drèze, and legal scholar Gautam Bhatia also backed the letter. India’s government has promoted these digital identity systems worldwide as part of its digital public infrastructure plan, supporting open-source tools like the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), developed largely by IIIT Bengaluru. MOSIP is used in countries like Morocco, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, and Uganda, though it differs from Aadhaar. The letter warns that Aadhaar could become a “dangerous tool of social control, especially but not only in the hands of an authoritarian government.” It highlights risks of data profiling as Aadhaar links many databases into one central system prone to cyber attacks and errors. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) did not respond immediately. The government defends Aadhaar as safe and crucial for service access, noting that the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality in 2018. But the letter accuses the government of ignoring parts of this ruling, stating, “At every step, the Aadhaar project has been a law unto itself.” It criticizes how Aadhaar began without legal backing, bypassed Parliament’s Upper House for approval, and that UIDAI violates Supreme Court orders. It also stresses a dropped parliamentary oversight clause and calls the identity model unjustified. The letter bluntly concludes, “Many countries have functional identity systems that are less coercive, invasive, exclusionary and unreliable than Aadhaar.” It urges caution as India pushes this model globally. This alert came ahead of World Human Rights Day on December 10, 2025.