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

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

11120 - Aadhaar detail leak in Jharkhand sign of deep cyber security flaws: Experts - Hindustan Times

INDIA Updated: Apr 24, 2017 07:54 Ist



Cyber security analysts warn of vulnerabilities that could lead to hacking of identity details of individuals.(PTI)

The leak of confidential information of more than a million citizens from a Jharkhand government website exposes systemic vulnerabilities in India’s much-touted e-governance framework, experts have said.

The warnings come after the Jharkhand Directorate of Social Security published on its website 1.4 million names, addresses, bank account details and Aadhaar numbers. Twenty-four hours after the breach was noticed by media outlets, officials had no idea how the details made it onto the website unsecured, but they had taken the page offline.

“User education is not adequate at this point in time to match the rate at which security-related risks are growing,” said Subhashis Banerjee, professor of Computer Science at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Banerjee explained that while the Centre and states are gathering more and more data about citizens to ensure government schemes reach intended beneficiaries, departments that hold this information are ill-equipped to maintain and safeguard these sensitive databases. “Even the government is not fully aware of what it is doing,” he said.

The introduction of Aadhaar-seeding, to inter-link these discreet databases, has only exacerbated this vulnerability as a leak in one database could leave a citizen’s entire digital life vulnerable to a hack.

“It [Aadhaar] can be used to correlate and find out the identity of an individual very easily,” said Banerjee, “Availability of these databases enables adversaries to keep a tab on individuals unless special precautions are taken to prevent this.”

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which oversees the Aadhaar framework, insists that its servers are impervious to attack, but most leaks are likely to come from an attack on the weakest link of the Aadhaar chain: thousands of insecure computers maintained by rickety block-level government offices across the country.

In Jharkhand, for instance, cyber security experts had long warned that many websites maintained by the state government were insecure.

“We had demonstrated these vulnerabilities to the state government in December,” said Vineet Kumar, a former member of Jharkhand police’s cyber cell, who has since set up the Cyber Peace Foundation, an NGO.

Officials at the Jharkhand IT department acknowledged the vulnerabilities of their websites, but pointed out that this particular lapse occurred on a website managed by the National Informatics Centre, India’s premier e-governance provider.
“The NIC has been taking care of all the technical aspects of Aadhaar related issues for us. They have been doing it since 2014, but this is the first time that such a leak has occurred on the website,” said Ram Parvesh, Director for Social Security, adding that his department had called for a meeting with NIC on Monday to solve the problem.

“Jharkhand-type leaks could happen anywhere,” said an official who works closely with the Ministry of Rural Development, “In many states, each department has its own IT vendors who build the software that stores this information. There is no common security standard across states and departments.”

This multiplicity of software solutions and private service providers, the official said, also made it difficult to implement nation-wide fixes once vulnerability had been discovered in one state.

“So even if we fix Jharkhand’s problem, we can’t simply upgrade all systems to ensure a similar problem does not occur in a different department in a different state,” he said.

The UIDAI declined comment on this story. An official statement on the Jharkhand leak is expected on Monday.