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

Friday, January 12, 2018

12718 - Aadhaar: A lot of questions yet to be resolved - Deccan Chronicle


The writer is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist

Published
Jan 12, 2018, 3:26 am IST

Everyone in a village in Uttarakhand has the same birth date on their Aadhaar cards.

 In Rajasthan, in the PDS, exclusion because of fingerprint failure has been close to 36 per cent

As the date approaches for the Supreme Court to hear several petitions challenging the Aadhaar project, the government’s Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which runs the intrusive scheme, is becoming even more bizarre in its responses. The latest move is to file a criminal case against a reporter from a national newspaper for filing a story showing that it is possible to get access to the records of billion-plus people pressured to enrol in the scheme for just Rs 500.

The report revealed that “it took just Rs 500, paid through Paytm, and 10 minutes in which an ‘agent’ of the group running the racket created a ‘gateway’ for this correspondent and gave a login ID and password” for “any Aadhaar number in the portal, and instantly get all particulars that an individual may have submitted to the UIDAI, including name, address, postal code (PIN), photo, phone number and email. What is more, The Tribune team paid another Rs 300, for which the agent provided ‘software’ that could facilitate the printing of the Aadhaar card after entering the Aadhaar number of any individual”.

This is just the latest of several instances where major faultlines in the Aadhaar scheme — which demands everything from mobile phone numbers to bank accounts and tax payments, health records, college admissions, pension schemes, mutual funds — have been revealed. Some 210 government websites and those of educational institutions displayed personal information along with UID numbers as recently as November 2017. UIDAI admitted this had happened, but said “that was not us”, the database is safe.

This is just one of many instances. In Rajasthan, in the PDS, exclusion because of fingerprint failure has been close to 36 per cent — which means that not even one person from 36 per cent of households are able to authenticate using their fingerprints. Jharkhand has witnessed deaths because the poorest have had difficulty linking their UID number with their ration card. Documents in the UIDAI archive from between 2009 and 2012 show that biometrics was still in an experimental phase. That biometrics are not working as hoped because biometric authentication requires the availability of Internet service and high-quality machines capable of capturing biometric details, making it contingent on these working.

This is not all. The failures multiply. In Maharashtra, loan waivers hits a roadblock as lakhs of farmers with the same account and Aadhaar numbers are listed. Everyone in a village in Uttarakhand has the same birth date on their Aadhaar cards. Underage girls who were rescued from brothels were sent back because their Aadhaar card showed them to be adults. In all these cases, the people implementing the scheme are distorting  the data to fill the number of cases they need. Yet there is no accountability. UIDAI merely reiterates that nothing is wrong.

However, in a supposed response to the rising public criticism, UIDAI this week introduced  the concept of a “Virtual ID”, which would be a random 16-digit number, which together with the user’s biometrics would give any authorised agency like a mobile phone company limited details like name, address and photograph, which are enough for any verification. This clever ploy does not meet the main objection to the Aadhaar project — of its intrusiveness.

To get the data of over a billion people, more than a million enumerators should be needed, as happens for the census that is conducted once every 10 years. This would require trained workers visiting each household and noting the details of each member. They would necessarily have to be government employees if responsibility is to be fixed. Instead, what has happened is that the work is contracted out to private firms, who break all the norms to get as many people as possible on their list. They would be prone to invent things, including putting many people on the same Aadhaar number or giving them all the same birth date.

If UIDAI was at all serious, it would conduct an investigation into which contractor was responsible for fudging the data, haul him up and expose him publicly. The responsibility and the criminal intent would be fixed. Instead, we have no idea why or how the data was fudged and the action taken against them.
Many such contractors could also be foreign companies with shady links to foreign intelligence agencies. The government needs to give an assurance to the people that their confidential data are not being whisked away to be analysed on foreign shores. Just who the various contractors are and the parts of the Aadhaar project they were assigned must be made public, and certainly before the Supreme Court — since these are after all not state secrets.

There is a further danger. The Internet and all the things stored on it is inherently porous. Governments and private hackers (let alone small-time crooks) are known to break into these closely-guarded spaces. Luckily so far, the information is put onto different computer databases — whether of each bank, or the passport office or health records or government tax records. 

Once all the information is in a single location, based on the Aadhaar number, it is possible for an intelligent hacker to collect the  vital data of anyone of consequence in the country.

Foreign companies like Facebook or Google are another matter. They already provide the Narendra Modi government the backing that keeps it in power. A recent report by Bloomberg noted that “India is arguably Facebook’s most important market ... with the nation recently edging out the US as the company’s biggest... Since his election, Modi’s Facebook followers have risen to 43 million, almost twice Trump’s count. “As Modi’s social media reach grew, his followers increasingly turned to Facebook and WhatsApp to target harassment campaigns against his political rivals. India has become a hotbed for fake news.” It is difficult to understand why the Narendra Modi government is pushing people into Aadhaar. Perhaps the backing of an organisation like Facebook is an important influence.