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, September 18, 2017

12068 - Fighting hackers is critical for Aadhaar - Millenium Post



 Sugato Hazra |  2017-09-15 16:15:52.0


When India is busy protecting the privacy of a person standing in the queue to update his bank records to check the credit of his social welfare funds with the power broker standing behind to take his cut, hackers are quietly busy fine tuning their skills. There had been certain test cases of attack on utilities in the recent past. Some computers of West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company came under cyber-attack. It happened in four locations in the district of West Midnapur in the month of May. The computers came under the attack of WannaCry, a crypto-ransomware, also known as WannaCrypt. WannaCry, arguably, the biggest ransomware attack the world has ever seen, affected at least 1,00,000 computers spread over 100-150 countries, including India.

The WanaCrypt0r 2.0 bug basically encrypts data on a computer within seconds and displays a message asking the user to pay a ransom of USD 300 in Bitcoins to restore access to the device and the data inside. Some of the facilities hit by the bug are FedEx, European car factories, Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica, Britain's health service and Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail network. In India, apart from the power distribution company in West Bengal, a section of computers at Andhra Pradesh's police departments were hacked. Computers in 18 police units in Chittoor, Krishna, Guntur, Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam districts were affected.

In an interconnected world, a smart hacker can destabilise human life more severely than some nuclear weapons dropped somewhere. Trailers of the possible havoc that can be created were seen in several places. For instance, residents of two apartment buildings in eastern Finland were left in the cold for about a week in October after a hacking attack disabled computers controlling heating and warm water systems. 

In 2016, Israel and Turkey reported hack attacks. In 2015, hackers infected the workstation of a Ukrainian utility company with malware, triggering an hours-long blackout affecting about 80,000 people in the western part of the country. Ukraine reported that another wave of hacks caused blackouts in Kiev.

The smarter a system, the worse could be the cyber-attack. Take electricity sector for example. The trend is to use smart digital system to stabilise power distribution from different sources, metering system at consumers' premises and also managing the system effectively. Film buffs world over might have enjoyed the hugely popular movies like Ocean's eleven, twelve and thirteen and also the Hollywood version of the Italian Job. Fictional these might be but the world has seen from the incidences mentioned here how vulnerable the smart systems are. Imagine hackers from rogue nations like North Korea accessing computers of the power distribution company of a large US city and the crisis it can create.

We have seen instances of hacking as a regular state-sponsored task to spy on rival nations. In a networked world, nothing is secret. By hacking into, say, the Aadhaar system a hacker can access mobile number, bank account details, and Pan numbers of an individual. True, it will not be worth the effort to syphon off some money from the Jan Dhan accounts – in any case there are local extortionists who would do that – but one does not need much imagination to know where the return on hacking investment lies.

The security environment of banks in India is archaic compared to the sharp hackers acting on a global scale. Only in 2016, many depositors lost money when their debit card details were collected through some malwares. This was a mere curtain raiser. A hacker can access, without much difficulty, the Government revenue network and transfer funds bypassing the firewalls. This can only be prevented if the departments also engage proficient persons to erect firewalls testing on a real time basis the vulnerabilities of the computer system. But given the slow process and the bureaucratic firewall present, engaging cyber experts will always come with a lag giving precious time advantage to a hacker.

Meanwhile, India is arguing over privacy of an individual. The nation is winking at the fact that the real issue is safety of the network, therefore data. In a networked world, it will take much less time for a cyber criminal to destabilise a country than for a missile to hit a target. What is more, even that missile can be guided by the criminal to hit a target of his choice. Network has helped mankind and brought in new threats to peace and stability to human lives.

The solution lies in remaining standalone and not adopting network system. Or better still go back to the paper works. Since this is a retrograde step no nation can afford to move back to the Stone Age. The answer lies in adopting technology with due precaution. Even if somebody manages to hack to Aadhar data base there must be two firewalls. First, it must be contained to the basic information of the bearer, not bank account or Pan details. Second, it should be confined to just the person whose account was hacked and must not lead to the entire database. Taking the example of the electricity sector of EU, it has been seen that realising that the millions of smart meters installed in homes are a tempting target for hackers some countries are choosing "dumber" models out of security fears. The meters that really worry security experts are those that can be remotely switched off. The dangers range from leaving a single house in the dark to causing a widespread blackout by switching smart meters on and off repeatedly. The Netherlands has opted for smart meters without the remote switch-off option.

The threat is real. At the same time, the need for Aadhaar like database cannot be ignored. India must adopt a proper system without dismissing the concern over data security. Creation of the data base is the easy part. Keeping it hacker-proof is critical.

(The views are strictly personal.)