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

Saturday, October 10, 2015

8896 - Aadhaar: A unique problem of identity - Indian Express



Launched in 2009 as a pet project by the Congress-led UPA government, Aadhaar provides a unique 12-digit identity number based on biometrics to every resident of India.

In September 2010, Ranjana Sonawane of Nandurbar district in Maharashtra became the first to get a unique ID under Aadhaar.
The Supreme Court’s refusal to modify its August 11 interim order and allow the use of Aadhaar for welfare schemes other than PDS and LPG schemes has put the spotlight back on the identification project. 

Ruhi Tewari and Utkarsh Anand explain

The initiative
Launched in 2009 as a pet project by the Congress-led UPA government, Aadhaar provides a unique 12-digit identity number based on biometrics to every resident of India. The idea was to make this number the basis of multiple schemes, initiatives and welfare programmes. On January 1, 2013, the UPA government launched the Direct Benefits Transfer scheme, which linked the transfer of benefits such as PDS and LPG to Aadhaar. While there was speculation about the fate of these schemes when the NDA government came to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi moved to make Aadhaar the basis of several of his initiatives, including the Digital India initiative and services such as banking and telecom. However, the Supreme Court’s reluctance to allow the government to expand the scope of Aadhaar has come as a setback to the government.

Case in court
The first petition challenging the validity of Aadhaar was moved in the Supreme Court by K S Puttaswamy, a retired judge of the Karnataka High Court, who alleged there was no legal sanctity to the UID numbers since the National Identification Authority of India Bill was still pending in Parliament. The PIL said the collection of personal data by the government not only violated the citizen’s fundamental right to privacy, it was also an executive act in overreach of Parliament.

In December 2012, the court issued notices, seeking responses from the Centre, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and others. Subsequently, other similar petitions were bunched together.

The first interim order came in September 2013, when the apex court said no person shall be deprived of social benefit schemes for want of Aadhaar and that it cannot be made mandatory for the delivery of any services. The second interim order was issued on August 11 this year when the court said that Aadhaar will not be used by the authorities for purposes other than PDS and the LPG distribution system. It added that information collected so far would not be shared with any agency and that the government would give publicity in the media that it was not mandatory for a citizen to obtain Aadhaar. This three-judge bench also decided to refer the matter to a larger bench to dwell upon a constitutional question.

Privacy: Fundamental or not
The case was referred to the Constitution Bench since it involved the privacy debate. It has been alleged that the biometrics database collected by UIDAI was not secure since private agencies were involved in collecting the personal information of individuals without any supervision by the government or its pertinent wings. Further, it was argued that by collecting personal information and biometric data, the project violated the individual’s right to privacy.

The government has, however, questioned whether right to privacy is a fundamental right. It has accepted privacy to be a valuable right but has sought to dispute the petitions which have built their cases on the argument that Aadhaar violated the fundamental rights of citizens.

In 1954, an eight-judge bench ruled that the right to privacy cannot be a fundamental right but some judgments on the subject since the 1990s had noted that the right to privacy can be construed as a fundamental right subject to certain restrictions and circumstances. It is in these circumstances that the issue has been referred to a Constitution Bench.

Arguments, against and for
Besides concerns about privacy, opponents of Aadhaar have argued that instead of ensuring inclusion, it had become an instrument of exclusion by denying services to people who didn’t enroll for it or chose not to.

The government and UIDAI, meanwhile, say Aadhaar is the most widely held identity document in the country with around 92 crore people under it. Restricting its voluntary use, they argue, would mean a majority of the population will not be able to use it to access various social schemes. They say it will impact nearly 1 crore workers under MGNREGA, who use Aadhaar to withdraw their wages every month, and nearly 30,00,000 pensioners. Countering the privacy argument, UIDAI says the data captured is secure and encrypted right at the source and all biometrics are stored in the Government of India’s servers with “world class security standards”.