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

Saturday, January 27, 2018

12791 - Make Aadhaar simple for vulnerable sections - Asian Age


Vice Admiral Arun Kumar Singh retired as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy's Eastern Naval Command in 2007. A nuclear and missile specialist trained in the former Soviet Union, he was also DG Indian Coast Guard.

Published : Jan 27, 2018, 4:31 am IST



Aadhaar is a biometric (finger print and retina scan) card system.

 Media reports have also indicated that some cremation grounds and cemeteries have asked for Aadhaar card of the deceased before carrying out the final rites.

If information from the Internet is any proof then 111 crore of 125 crore Indians have been issued Aadhaar cards. Meanwhile, the media has reported unfortunate cases of starvation deaths of poor people after having been denied subsidised ration due to their failing biometrics or non-availability of Aadhaar cards. A Google search indicates that India has an estimated 78 million homeless (including 11 million street children) people, an estimated 276 million people living below the international poverty line $1.25 per day (in purchasing power parity terms) while over 104 million senior citizens (over 60 years) with fading biometrics face problems of living in Digital India. Also vulnerable are pensioners or the sick whose biometric authentication “fails” during the annual pension life certificate requirement.

This article delves at options available to make life simpler for about 450 million (assuming half of them have problems in getting Aadhaar due to having no address proof or with failed fingerprint biometric authentication) vulnerable people living in Digital India.

At the outset, I must admit that I do support the Aadhaar card (it does have a role to play in national security during this period of global transnational terror, counterfeit currency trickling in from Pakistan and for tackling the menace of black money) and am aware that the Supreme Court is examining the issue of “privacy and data leakage” while the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has recently come out with an “additional layer of security” to prevent data leakage, i.e. “fusion facial recognition in conjunction with one time password (OTP) or with biometric functions (finger prints and or retina scan)” for authentication beginning July 1, 2018 so as to provide “major relief” to senior citizens who have problems of fading biometrics, and are particularly vulnerable as Aadhaar is (or may be, depending on the Supreme Court verdict) linked to pensions, hospital admissions-cum-discharge, bank accounts, mobile phones, fertiliser subsidy and ration cards.

Media reports have also indicated that some cremation grounds and cemeteries have asked for Aadhaar card of the deceased before carrying out the final rites.

Aadhaar is a biometric (finger print and retina scan) card system. Neither is it a smart card (with a chip) like our debit or credit cards nor is it a combination of the more versatile biometric (thumb print only)-cum-smart card with a chip like the Ex-Serviceman Contributory Health Scheme (ECHS) card being used by military veterans. After some discussions with people working at Aadhaar centres, I discovered that to make an Aadhaar card it requires, at least, 20 per cent “capture” of all 10 fingers of an individual along with retina scan of both eyes and the photograph. It is obvious that the quality of equipment used for this “biometric data capture” plays an important role as do data transmission by Internet, followed by data storage in a secure data bank and data retrieval when needed.

I further learnt that to get a “reliable authentication by finger print” all the time, the initial “fingerprint data capture” while making Aadhaar must be above 50 per cent, thus even though a person has an Aadhaar card (with 20 per cent data capture), his fingerprint authentication may fail when needed (due to fingerprint data capture being less than 50 per cent); presently, banks, hospitals, ration shops, hospitals, mobile phone shops, etc, only have “fingerprint” machines and not the expensive retina scan machines and certainly not the prohibitively expensive facial scan machines. A recent TV show discussion indicated that “facial recognition” machines have been installed at an airport in the UK and apparently one such machine costs Rs 2 crore and initial trials had shown failure rates of about 30 per cent though with advancing technology this situation will definitely improve.

Assuming that the Supreme Court rules in favour of the continued usage of the Aadhaar card, what are the interim solutions to provide “relief” to the weaker sections of society till such time that Aadhaar can be made completely “safe and usable”? 

First, assuming that uninterrupted electricity and Internet is available, it is obvious that the equipment used for initial data capture, data transmission, data storage and retrieval must be urgently upgraded to the latest global standards. 

Second, free Aadhaar cards (along with bank accounts) need to be given to the poor and homeless using the nearest post office or bank as “address proof” till such time that all have a roof over their head, by 2022, as promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For those living below poverty line (and unable to own a mobile phone for OTP, etc) and relying on subsidised food ration shops, the old system of book-keeping along with a digital photo of the individual taken along with his ration card (and Aadhaar card, if held).

For the ageing and increasing number of senior citizens who become more and more vulnerable due to failing health, fading biometrics and collapsing family support systems, the government (and hospitals, banks, pension disbursement authorities, insurance companies, etc) should, apart from “OTP”, consider the old “written forms for annual pension life certificates” or taking a digital photo of the individual with Aadhaar card. Another option would be to automatically issue an “Aadhaar smart card with chip” (easy authentication of identity by a special card reader with a screen display of the individual’s photo, date of birth, visible identification marks, height, colour of hair and eyes) to senior citizens and to those people whose finger prints get worn out due to hard manual labour.

To conclude, implementation of all the above proposals may not make Aadhaar “foolproof” in a diverse, over-populated country like India and their maybe some “misuse” by a few but it is still worth making life easier for the vulnerable sections of our society and should be given the same priority as needed for cyber security to prevent leakage of data. 

Aadhaar is needed but it must be user-friendly and inclusive and given a higher priority than the proposal to make Bengaluru airport as India’s first “biometric recognition walk through airport”.