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

Sunday, May 7, 2017

11271 - Mistaken Identity - Indian Express



  • OpinionEditorials

By disparaging legitimate data security concerns, government could devalue Aadhaar and its promised efficiencies


By: Editorial | Published:May 5, 2017 12:20 am

Finally, the government has admitted that almost 3.5 crore Aadhaar identities have found their way into the public domain, having been inadvertently published on government websites. Nevertheless, the state counsel arguing against a clutch of PILs in the Supreme Court insists that it is currently the “most foolproof method”. He has had the humility to concede that the picture could be different 20 years later, but not the wisdom to acknowledge that it could happen tomorrow. Over the years, the Aadhaar establishment has brushed off security and privacy concerns by insisting that the system is technologically foolproof. However, humans make technology, and it can be cracked by other humans. Data can only be secured by punitive privacy law, not technology alone.

Aadhaar was presented as a very tiny pinhole, through which only the reply to a single query could emerge: Is the person interfacing with the system who he or she claims to be? Nothing else, certainly not the contents of the database on which the query runs, was supposed to come out into the public domain. 

However, it now appears that the pinhole is about as wide as India Gate, and open for traffic. Did the Aadhaar technology fail? Of course not, the state counsel has protested, and he was right. Yet the fact remains that the system failed. One of the first principles of hacking is that the weakest link is not in the machine. It is the human sitting at the keyboard. Hackers prefer to target people rather than systems, counting on them to give unauthorised access to systems out of ignorance or carelessness.


The “leak” of Aadhaar data owed to the ignorance of government departments about data security. They published data which was never supposed to be let out of information silos. Of all the scenarios anticipated by the naysayers, this is the worst. If this is normalised, then lesser concerns must seem trivial, like the misuse of data for marketing by private agencies involved in the Aadhaar chain. That alone would have brought people out on the streets in a mature information society. Yet the attorney general has dismissed such concerns as “bogus”. And there is no willingness to reconcile the legal status of Aadhaar, which is voluntary, with the fact that it is compulsory in practice. Aadhaar is an ambitious project which can bring valuable efficiencies to government spending. 

The government should not devalue it by disparaging the completely legitimate security concerns of citizens, or by forcing it upon them by ignoring the letter and spirit of the law. That would be a truly “bogus” policy.