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, September 24, 2017

12105 - Analysing privacy in a data-centric world - Economic Times

ET CONTRIBUTORS|
Updated: Sep 20, 2017, 12.08 AM IST

By Mrutyunjay Mahapatra

       Civilisation is the process of setting man free from men. 


Famous author Edward Snowden told, “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.” His words were prophetic. 

Privacy as a concept is in a perpetual evolutionary phase. When men were hunter gatherers, there was no privacy. As rightly stated, “Civilisation is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilisation is the process of setting man free from men.” Nation states, with collective will and persona, defined and shaped privacy in human life through instrumentalities like polity, judiciary, media and debates on gender equality. 

With time, the demand for space of one’s own got accentuated. We never thought of privacy when governments collected massive data in census, in IT returns or employers in job applications, but we are worried about it now when Aadhaar is linked to benefit transfer or calls are made for offers. Every millisecond, huge amount of data is recorded and generated at multiple points. From monitoring traffic to tracking epidemic spread to trading stocks, time is of the essence. A few seconds’ delay in understanding information could cost money and life. Big data needs to be fast and smart. This speed and efficiency have become a double-edged sword for privacy. Smart data vision, IOT and data-led world are ringing alarm bells for privacy. 

Should we prevent data collection, aggregation and analytics, touted as highly beneficial to the customers in deference to privacy? 

Data Privacy and security because of interconnectedness are taken synonymously. Security is focused on ‘Blocking the Bad’ and ‘Allowing the Good’. For privacy in this digital world, this doesn’t work when everything could be compromised with camouflaged consent and we can’t keep pace with data to identify good from bad. 

Data impacting individuals could be one or more of the three ownership characters, 
i) What you know & what you have, 
ii) What you don’t know & what you have 
and iii) What you don’t know & what you don’t have. 

Data privacy has three degrees— intensely private, semi-private and public. Where you live and where you work could be public data. What is your friends’ circle? The shopping trips you made and the jobs you applied for could be the semi-private data. relationships, criminal records, medico-legal history, etc., are examples of intensely private data. 

Data protection is about securing data against unauthorised access, while data privacy defines boundaries of access. Security protects the information’s confidentiality, integrity and availability; privacy assures quality control of usage defined by owner or the law with the touchstone of fairness. 

Data Privacy is a term hyped, misunderstood and philosophised because lack of distinction between raw data, analytical insights and results. It is interchangeably used for data compromise, data protection and data surveillance. ‘Interest and benefit’ of the data owner is the third dimension adding to the confusion. Some key questions are there — how to retrieve data if its privacy was compromised? In a connected environment, where boundaries of data are porous and fungible, how does data privacy play out? How to be data smart and put origin point preventions? The recent Supreme Court judgement holding privacy as a fundamental right equivalent to right to live, practice religion, freedom of speech, etc., has come at a time when all the countries around the world are engaged in understanding and stabilising the power, potential and disruption unleashed by information technology and digital world. 

A near-term strategy for privacy is self-protection as well as basic ecosystem regulations. Origin point prevention is a necessity. This requires customer awareness as well as enforcement of disclosures. For example, privacy compromise mostly happens through ‘lazy’ consents at the time of download of free apps, inability of general public to read fine prints in websites and utilities like Google and Whatsapp, overwhelming short-term benefits of exchange of privacy, etc. 

Privacy enforcement will require some reduction in user experience and benefits. We have to bear the downside of it, if privacy is our concern as new colonizers of data will continue to gather data walking around the regulations. Ecosystem of privacy enforcers include collection and storage disciplines. Today, people are increasingly making their personal information available publically, thanks to e-commerce, platforms like Ola, Uber and Amazon and initiatives like Digital India, Aadhaar and Demonetisation. Storage leads to privacy compromise. Time limits should be established for erasure. An authority and audit process must be prescribed to enforce this. 

Technologies like smoke screens, data encryption and masking of personal identifiers are first steps to privacy. Thus for data privacy, the first call must be taken by the data owner, the individual, firm or the corporate. Short-term benefits like user experience, offers in e-commerce, socialisation, etc., are all compromisers of privacy, temporarily or permanently. We must decide with full knowledge. As Benjamin Franklin said: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” 

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