AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 8902 - A firmer Aadhaar

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

8902 - A firmer Aadhaar - Indian Express

A firmer Aadhaar

If the government wants the UID project to deliver on its promise, it must first give it statutory backing

By: Express News Service |

Published:October 9, 2015 11:22 pm

The Modi government clearly views Aadhaar as an essential tool in its ambitious Digital India initiative, and in its plan to overhaul the existing architecture of social welfare schemes.

Almost since its inception, the fate of Aadhaar — which the Supreme Court on Wednesday referred to a larger bench while declining to stay an August 11 interim order that restricted its use to only the LPG scheme and the PDS — has been uncertain.

Even as the executive has enrolled millions of people in the biometric identification programme, Aadhaar has been vulnerable to legal challenges, especially on the ground of individual privacy. Despite what seems to be a multiparty consensus on the transformative potential of the unique identification project, which originated as a UPA scheme but has been subsequently adopted by the NDA, both governments have failed to insulate Aadhaar from such disputes. They have left it to fend for itself without a statutory framework.

RELATED ARTICLE

The Modi government clearly views Aadhaar as an essential tool in its ambitious Digital India initiative, and in its plan to overhaul the existing architecture of social welfare schemes.

Aadhaar’s promise lies in its capacity to enable the state to effectively target entitlement programmes to the intended beneficiary by allowing those who most need benefits to access them without requiring various stamps of officialdom as proof of identity. By linking a number to unique biometric details, Aadhaar can help eliminate duplication and impersonation in muster rolls and beneficiary lists, plugging the leaks that currently characterise most social welfare initiatives. Yet, the government is endangering its own agenda with its apparent disinterest in giving the programme a clearer definition in law, which might also address some of the questions that hang over it, particularly on privacy.

It is not as if concerns that the wealth of personal information collected by the Aadhaar database could be misused are unwarranted. Not only does the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which administers Aadhaar, operate independent of parliamentary oversight, government initiatives like the Orwellian-sounding Central Monitoring System fan suspicion that the state will use composite Aadhaar data to surveil and profile individuals and groups. The CBI’s attempt in March last year to force the UIDAI to share its fingerprint data with investigators for a rape case was stayed by the Supreme Court, and will have lent weight to the arguments of privacy rights advocates.

Such incidents underscore the fact that unless the UIDAI is supported by legislation, the courts will continue to be the final arbiters of its mandate. By making it a priority to codify both a right to privacy that explicitly outlines a framework for the operation of data collection agencies and the UIDAI itself, the Modi government can remove the uncertainty that plagues Aadhaar and enable it to realise its full potential.