In 2009, I became extremely concerned with the concept of Unique Identity for various reasons. Connected with many like minded highly educated people who were all concerned.
On 18th May 2010, I started this Blog to capture anything and everything I came across on the topic. This blog with its million hits is a testament to my concerns about loss of privacy and fear of the ID being misused and possible Criminal activities it could lead to.
In 2017 the Supreme Court of India gave its verdict after one of the longest hearings on any issue. I did my bit and appealed to the Supreme Court Judges too through an On Line Petition.
In 2019 the Aadhaar Legislation has been revised and passed by the two houses of the Parliament of India making it Legal. I am no Legal Eagle so my Opinion carries no weight except with people opposed to the very concept.
In 2019, this Blog now just captures on a Daily Basis list of Articles Published on anything to do with Aadhaar as obtained from Daily Google Searches and nothing more. Cannot burn the midnight candle any longer.
"In Matters of Conscience, the Law of Majority has no place"- Mahatma Gandhi
Ram Krishnaswamy
Sydney, Australia.

Aadhaar

The UIDAI has taken two successive governments in India and the entire world for a ride. It identifies nothing. It is not unique. The entire UID data has never been verified and audited. The UID cannot be used for governance, financial databases or anything. It’s use is the biggest threat to national security since independence. – Anupam Saraph 2018

When I opposed Aadhaar in 2010 , I was called a BJP stooge. In 2016 I am still opposing Aadhaar for the same reasons and I am told I am a Congress die hard. No one wants to see why I oppose Aadhaar as it is too difficult. Plus Aadhaar is FREE so why not get one ? Ram Krishnaswamy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.-Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.Mahatma Gandhi

“The invasion of privacy is of no consequence because privacy is not a fundamental right and has no meaning under Article 21. The right to privacy is not a guaranteed under the constitution, because privacy is not a fundamental right.” Article 21 of the Indian constitution refers to the right to life and liberty -Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi

“There is merit in the complaints. You are unwittingly allowing snooping, harassment and commercial exploitation. The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a court for the purpose of criminal investigation.”-A three judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar said in an interim order.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathan describes UID as an inverse of sunshine laws like the Right to Information. While the RTI makes the state transparent to the citizen, the UID does the inverse: it makes the citizen transparent to the state, she says.

Good idea gone bad
I have written earlier that UID/Aadhaar was a poorly designed, unreliable and expensive solution to the really good idea of providing national identification for over a billion Indians. My petition contends that UID in its current form violates the right to privacy of a citizen, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This is because sensitive biometric and demographic information of citizens are with enrolment agencies, registrars and sub-registrars who have no legal liability for any misuse of this data. This petition has opened up the larger discussion on privacy rights for Indians. The current Article 21 interpretation by the Supreme Court was done decades ago, before the advent of internet and today’s technology and all the new privacy challenges that have arisen as a consequence.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Rajya Sabha

“What is Aadhaar? There is enormous confusion. That Aadhaar will identify people who are entitled for subsidy. No. Aadhaar doesn’t determine who is eligible and who isn’t,” Jairam Ramesh

But Aadhaar has been mythologised during the previous government by its creators into some technology super force that will transform governance in a miraculous manner. I even read an article recently that compared Aadhaar to some revolution and quoted a 1930s historian, Will Durant.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP

“I know you will say that it is not mandatory. But, it is compulsorily mandatorily voluntary,” Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Saba April 2017.

August 24, 2017: The nine-judge Constitution Bench rules that right to privacy is “intrinsic to life and liberty”and is inherently protected under the various fundamental freedoms enshrined under Part III of the Indian Constitution

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the World; indeed it's the only thing that ever has"

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” -Edward Snowden

In the Supreme Court, Meenakshi Arora, one of the senior counsel in the case, compared it to living under a general, perpetual, nation-wide criminal warrant.

Had never thought of it that way, but living in the Aadhaar universe is like living in a prison. All of us are treated like criminals with barely any rights or recourse and gatekeepers have absolute power on you and your life.

Announcing the launch of the # BreakAadhaarChainscampaign, culminating with events in multiple cities on 12th Jan. This is the last opportunity to make your voice heard before the Supreme Court hearings start on 17th Jan 2018. In collaboration with @no2uidand@rozi_roti.

UIDAI's security seems to be founded on four time tested pillars of security idiocy

1) Denial

2) Issue fiats and point finger

3) Shoot messenger

4) Bury head in sand.

God Save India

Monday, September 1, 2014

5819 - Narendra Modi likes Facebook. But does he like its surveillance? - Deccan Herald

By Gopal S, Aug 21, 2014 :

Had a very fruitful meeting with Sheryl Sandberg. She pointed out that India is a very important country for Facebook, considering the high number of active Facebook users in India’ -- Facebook post of prime minister Narendra Modi.

It is well known by now that social media played a very important role in Modi’s spectacularly successful election campaign. It is also well-known that not only the prime minister but his entire party has avidly embraced social media.

So has India, young and old, as the above post indicates. And so also has the entire world since one in every four humans on this planet is a member of Facebook.

So, one could ask, where is the problem? It so happens that there is one and a major one at that.I am not talking about dangers to individual privacy and other factors that have been discussed to death in academic, political, social, legal and philosophical forums.



Social media is the inevitable evolution of human interaction brought about by technology, just as the postal service, the telegraph and the telephone (and more recently the mobile phone) triggered in the past.

It is undoubtedly a very potent tool for interacting and keeping in touch, and the extreme mobility and constant connectivity provided by smartphones and tablets have multiplied its potency and universal appeal. It is a very convenient tool for spreading one’s message, and therefore, a very effective political device as Modi’s campaign has demonstrated.

Unfortunately it is also a very potent tool for causing revolts, revolutions and political uprisings. The earliest major successful movement started on Facebook was the one against the ruthless FARC guerrillas of Colombia in 2010. The upheaval in Egypt, the Arab Spring revolts, Iranian protests – in all of them social media played a major role. It can also be used to spread lies and rumours, as some Pakistan based activists did during the 2012 Assam riots.

However technology has been a double-edged weapon since the beginning of time – when the first human discovered that a rock could be used to kill animals for food he also found that he could use that technology to crush his rival’s head. So this cannot be the problem.

Mammoth oligarchy

A fact that escapes attention is that all major social networking platforms – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon are US based and owned corporations subject to US laws, transforming it into an oligarchy unrivalled in history. They are subject to US laws which, by extension get applied to the rest of the world as well.

For example, despite strict European data privacy laws Microsoft has admitted that, to comply with the US Patriot Act, they would provide to US authorities personal information that may reside on its European cloud (servers). Yahoo took refuge behind US court decrees to circumvent French court orders. Google and Twitter have attempted to defy orders of Indian courts.

Therefore, despite some push-backs, notably from Europe, the rest of the world is unwittingly being drawn into the US legal net through the activities of these omnipresent Internet giants. US courts and legislature are well-known for their pro-business stance which means that these giants are able to get legal sanction for activities normally prohibited in other jurisdictions. But that is only part of the story.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook appeared on the cover of Time Magazine as 2010 Man-of-the-Year. During his interview with Grossman, Time’s journalist, at Facebook headquarters a curious incident happened, best described in Grossman’s own words: “The door opened, and a distinguished-looking gray-haired man burst in — it's the only way to describe his entrance — trailed by a couple of deputies.

He was both the oldest person in the room by 20 years and the only one wearing a suit. He was in the building, he explained with the delighted air of a man about to secure ironclad bragging rights forever, and he just had to step in and introduce himself to Zuckerberg: Robert Mueller, director of the FBI, pleased to meet you.”

If the director of FBI seeks introduction to the CEO of a corporation there has to be good reason. It’s because, again in Grossman’s words, “(Facebook) has a richer, more intimate hoard of information about its (US) citizens than any nation has ever had, and the U.S. government sometimes comes knocking, subpoena in hand, looking to borrow some.”

That rich hoard of information is not limited to US citizens – Facebook has a 1.3 billion user base, and the US government, when required, comes knocking for their information too. (The Indian government also does that but that is another story).

In fact the US has openly stated its intention to use social media as a tool for furthering its ideology and foreign sovereign interests. When Egypt was engulfed in crisis Hilary Clinton defended the use of Facebook and Twitter in the Egyptian uprising and in fact urged Egypt not to block social media.

This brings us to the real problem. On the one hand BJP has vehemently protested the US government’s surveillance of and gathering of data about its activities.

But The prime minister himself has welcomed the COO of the company that probably has richer and more intimate hoard of information than the US government can gather through surveillance; and he wants his administration to whole-heartedly embrace its technology. Therein lies the problem.

The enemy is within. What are the dangers? Are there solutions? These questions need to be examined.