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, March 14, 2016

9502 - All pervasive Aadhaar raises serious privacy concerns - Deccan Herald

R Ramakumar, Mar 12, 2016:


It is often said that “privacy is not something that people feel, except in its absence”. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley realised it the hard way in 2013 when his telephone records were illegally obtained by the government.

In an article titled “My Call Detail Records and A Citizen’s Right to Privacy”, Jaitley wrote: “Every citizen in India has a right to privacy. His right to privacy is an inherent aspect of his personal liberty...

We are now entering the era of the Aadhaar number. The government has recently made the existence of the Aadhaar number as a condition precedent for undertaking several activities– from registering marriages to execution of property documents.

Will those who encroach upon the affairs of others be able to get access to bank accounts and other important details by breaking into the system? If this ever becomes possible, the consequences would be far messier.”

The same Jaitley has now turned turtle; he has, through an extraordinarily dubious procedure, got passed The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016 in the Lok Sabha as a money bill. Every point that Jaitley made in 2013 stands unaddressed in this bill. First, Aadhaar Bill is not a money bill.

The Aadhaar Bill could have been considered a money bill if it had dealt only with the flow of money in and out of the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI). However, the bill deals with much more. Implementation of Aadhaar raises strong possibilities of infringement of the fundamental rights of citizens like privacy. When fundamental rights of citizens may potentially be violated by a legislation, parliamentary procedures cannot be reduced to farce.

Secondly, the question of whether privacy is a fundamental right is currently under the consideration of a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court. Further, according to the court, Aadhaar is not mandatory and no citizen should lose his rights/benefits for not possessing Aadhaar.

The bill rejects the court’s position on whether Aadhaar is mandatory, and shadily pre-empts the court’s pending decision on whether privacy is a fundamental right.

By this act, Jaitley’s government has expressed its utter disregard for the Supreme Court. What if the bench decides that privacy is a fundamental right and Aadhaar is not mandatory? Jaitley’s government, then, would have reduced Parliament into a joke.

Jaitley’s assertion that privacy protection is embedded in Chapter VI of the bill is laughable. The fallacy in his argument is that clauses on privacy protection in the bill deal only with the biometric data collected and stored by the Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR). The potential of Aadhaar to violate privacy is not limited to CIDR, but is a systemic concern.

With Aadhaar becoming pervasive, the collection, use and storage of biometric information of individuals would also become pervasive across multiple agencies, private and public. Every act of an individual, including authentication, would leave behind a biometric trail. The bill simply does not address any such concerns.

Biological attributes?

The Aadhaar Bill also has a dangerous wording of the phrase “biometric information” in Chapter I. It is defined as: “photograph, fingerprint, iris scan, or other such biological attributes of an individual ...”

We are aware that only a photograph, 10 fingerprints and two iris scans were collected during Aadhaar enrollment. What are these “other such biological attributes”, when no such attribute was actually collected? Is this a reference to the proposed and hugely controversial Human DNA Profiling Bill of 2015?

Will the government now begin to collect and store DNA samples of citizens and then argue that the Aadhaar Bill provides it with legislative sanction? No clarifications have been provided. Jaitley, in his urge to curtail democratic discussion, has probably pushed in a draconian law.

Jaitley's positioning of the Bill as pro-poor and welfare-oriented is nothing but a clever ploy to mask the real intentions behind the Bill. I have argued elsewhere, from 2009 itself, that the real intention behind pushing the Aadhaar project is not to improve welfare or reduce poverty, but to effect a neo-liberal transformation of the state's role in the social sector. Such an objective has two elements, both of which are constitutive of neo-liberal policy in India.

The first is a shift from universalism to targeting. Aadhaar is not intended to expand social service provisions. Its aim is to keep benefits restricted to “targeted” sections, ensure targeting with technological precision, and thus limit the government's fiscal commitments. The second is a shift from direct provision to indirect provision of services.

Here, existing institutions of direct intervention are dismantled, and replaced by new institutions of indirect provision intermediated by the market. Aadhaar, as claimed, is not a tool of empowerment; it is actually an alibi for the state to leave the citizen unmarked in the market for social services. Here, Narendra Modi's JAM (Jandhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) trinity is nothing but a rehashed version of the UPA government's Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme.
It is interesting to remember that Modi too, like Jaitley, was opposed to the Aadhaar project. At the BJP's rally in Tiruchirappalli in September 2013, Modi was strongly critical of Aadhaar.

Why has Modi jumped into the Aadhaar bandwagon now after claiming that it was no “herb for all cures”? Why has his government suddenly lost respect for the Supreme Court? In my view, the answer is simple. After coming to power, Modi has realised the utility of Aadhaar as an instrument to further entrench a neo-liberal social policy. No wonder the UPA and the NDA are called the “neo-liberal twins!”
(The writer is Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)