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

Thursday, May 4, 2017

11222 - Supreme Court has every reason to strike down Aadhaar Act. Will it? - Scroll.In

The apex court will likely find a compromise by reading down the law’s more draconian provisions while keeping the biometric database intact.

Published Yesterday · 06:30 am.  

In 1858, an English civil servant named William Herschel pioneered the biometric method of identification by forcing a businessman in Jangipur, now in West Bengal, to impress his handprint on a contract he had entered into with the government. Herschel soon began collecting fingerprints from pensioners as a means of avoiding impersonation by others and considered this his “substantial contribution towards public morality”.

What began as one Englishman’s experiment with the “natives” has culminated, a century and a half later, in the creation of the Central Identities Data Repository, a centralised database that contains photographs, fingerprints and iris scans of over a billion Indians. The constitutionality of collecting a citizen’s biometric data for the purpose of issuing her a 12-digit Aadhaar identification number and its subsequent storage in the repository will, one hopes, soon be tested in the most momentous constitutional case of our time.

Substantial question of law
Under Article 145, the Chief Justice of India may assign a Constitution bench to decide substantial questions of law as to the interpretation of the Constitution, referred to it by a bench comprising two judges or more of the Supreme Court. This was what happened in August 2015 when a three-judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar was hearing various petitions challenging the constitutionality of Aadhaar. It referred the following questions to the constitution bench for a decision.
  •   Whether there is any “right to privacy” guaranteed under the Constitution.  
  •   If such a right exists, what is the source and what are the contours of such a right as there is no express provision guaranteeing the right to privacy. 
How the constitution bench answers will determine the future of the Aadhaar system and the Central Identities Data Repository, and whether India’s march towards becoming a surveillance state can be halted.

Right to private life
In 1954, an eight-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in the case of MP Singh, held that there was no need to import the right of privacy into the Indian Constitution, especially when the framers in their wisdom had decided against providing for such a fundamental right. 

A decade later, in the case of Kharak Singh, a six-judge bench, by a majority of four to two, again reiterated that an invasion of privacy by the state did not violate fundamental rights.

Justice Koka Subba Rao, part of the minority in Kharak Singh, analysed the scope and ambit of Article 21 of the Constitution, which prevents the state from depriving individuals of their life and personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. What this means is that depriving someone who commits murder of life or liberty by sentencing them to death or imprisonment will be constitutional as it is according to the procedure established by law, that is, Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code.

In Justice Subba Rao’s opinion, the right to personal liberty took in not only a right to be free from restrictions placed on one’s movements but also to be free from encroachments on one’s private life. “It is true our Constitution does not expressly declare a right to privacy as a fundamental right, but the said right is an essential ingredient of personal liberty.”

His reasoning was adopted by a four-judge bench in the case of Govind, which was decided in 1975.

Delivering the unanimous judgement of the court, Justice KK Mathew stated that “the individual, his personality and those things stamped with his personality shall be free from official interference except where a reasonable basis for intrusion exists”. 

Almost two decades later, in the case of Rajagopal, the Supreme Court explicitly recognised the right to privacy as being implicit in the right to life and personal liberty.

It is in the backdrop of these cases that the constitution bench will have to decide the validity of the Aadhaar Act and the Central Identities Data Repository on grounds of invasion of privacy.

Just, fair and reasonable
Given the recent jurisprudence of the court, the bench will likely conclude that every person has the right to privacy under Article 21. 
In the Canara Bank case, which was decided in 2005, the court examined a provision of the Andhra Pradesh Stamps Act, which allowed the collector to enter any premises and inspect any records under the custody of a public officer if such inspection would result in the discovery of fraud or omission of any duty payable to the government.

In one of its most important pronouncements on privacy rights, the court ruled that as long as the financial records in the custody of a public officer belonged to a citizen, those records would be protected under the citizen’s right to privacy. If the constitution bench chooses to follow this approach, there should be no difficulty in holding that an individual’s biometric data, which is far more sensitive than financial records, will also be protected under privacy rights.


Petitioner 3: What cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly.

Justice Sikri: So what you're saying is, information about your income goes into the Aadhaar database?
Petitioner 3: Yes, & that's illegal

There is, however, no absolute right to privacy and it can be interfered with. That said, the Supreme Court stated in its Canara Bank judgement, following the test laid down in the landmark Maneka Gandhi vs Union of India case, that the law and procedure authorising interference with personal liberty and right of privacy must be just, fair and reasonable, and not arbitrary, fanciful or oppressive.

What this means is simply this: once it is established that compelling a person to part with their biometric data is an invasion of their privacy, the state will have to satisfy the requirement that the law authorising the collection of this data, namely the Aadhaar Act, is just, fair and reasonable.

Free and informed consent
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi is likely to argue that the state is not compelling citizens to part with their biometric data as enrolling for Aadhaar is voluntary. This argument is not likely to pass muster with the constitution bench as by making Aadhaar enrolment mandatory for filing tax returns and availing various subsidies under several welfare schemes, the state is essentially penalising those citizens who fail to part with their biometric data.

In response, Rohatgi could contend, as he has done in the past, that the poor man will have no second thoughts about shedding his privacy rights to enrol for Aadhaar as it gets him a square meal and earnings.

Again, this argument should be rejected by the bench under what is known as the Doctrine of Unconstitutional Conditions, which was propounded in the Ahmedabad St Xavier’s College case. Under the doctrine, any stipulation imposed upon the grant of a governmental privilege that in effect requires its recipient to relinquish some constitutional right is not constitutional.

This means that the state cannot force citizens to give up their right to privacy in order to avail of an LPG subsidy. It is incumbent upon the state to ensure that the citizens can enjoy privileges afforded to them by the government without asking them to relinquish fundamental rights.

Rohatgi, though, has another ace up his sleeve: that 97% of Indians have “voluntarily consented” to submitting their biometric data. This consent argument, too, can be countered by relying on the unconstitutional conditions doctrine. The Supreme Court has mandated that the state cannot use the grant of privileges to secure a valid consent to acts which would be beyond its constitutional power. Thus, if a villager consents to providing his biometric data to benefit from the employment guarantee scheme Mnrega, her consent cannot be said to be free and voluntary.

It can also be argued that the hundreds of millions of Indians who “consented” to their biometric data being taken before the passage of the Aadhaar Act in March 2016 were not informed as to what they were consenting to. Hence, if you enrolled for Aadhaar before March 2016, it cannot be presumed that you consented to Section 33 of the Act, which states that your data can be shared with the police if there is a court order to that effect without you getting an opportunity to be heard.

Your data can also be disclosed in the interest of national security on the orders of a bureaucrat with no judicial oversight. One would hope that such draconian provisions that impinge on an individual’s liberty and privacy will lead to Aadhaar being struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and destruction of the biometric data contained in the Central Identities Data Repository.

The last refuge
A more realistic outcome is that the court will put off a decision, like it did in the case of demonetisation, until it is too late to turn back the clock. Then, when it does rule on the constitutionality of Aadhaar, the court will most likely find a compromise by reading down the draconian provisions while ensuring that the repository, which forms the backbone of Aadhaar, remains intact.

The man most responsible for the behemoth that is the Central Identities Data Repository is the technocrat Nandan Nilekani, a modern-day Herschel whose engineers have perhaps unwittingly built the most effective tool for mass surveillance in human history. The highest court in the land is now the last refuge of the citizen whose rights are being sacrificed at the altar of good governance. Whether it provides them sanctuary remains to be seen.

Abhishek Sudhir is the founder of Sudhir Law Review, a legal education website.

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