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, March 19, 2018

13003 - ‘Aadhaar may have been launched 10 years too early’ - Hindu Businessline



THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, MARCH 16

Aadhaar has achieved “an awful lot” to become among the largest identity schemes of the world, but it may have been introduced 10 years too early, says a renowned fintech commentator. "As I see it, Aadhaar started off as a visionary programme in 2007," says Chris Skinner. With the benefit of hindsight, one would say one would do it differently in 2017, he told BusinessLine here.

CENTRAL REGISTRY
This is because one has the advantage of the distributed ledger technology (blockchain), which decentralises the massive database and renders it more secure. The very fact that Aadhaar resides on a central registry poses a challenge, since it lends itself to hacking, as has been reported in recent times.

In fact, even distributed ledger technology is at an experimental stage now. So it might just be that Aadhaar's time has not come yet, Skinner reasoned. A leading author and speaker, chair of the European Networking Forum, the Financial Services Club and Nordic Finance Innovation, Skinner was hosted by SunTec Business Solutions here.

CHALLENGE IN WEST
Known worldwide as a strategist on financial markets, he said the wave of digitalisation has thrown up associated challenges and opportunities across the globe. For instance, Europe and America have to contend with technology infrastructure of the seventies and eighties. "So they're in a legacy economy syndrome where things are soo complicated that if you try to tinker with it, you potentially bring down the whole system."
But India and China are doing some amazingly interesting things, in different ways, in what are essentially growth economies, as recently articulated by the IMF. "In India, this growth has been driven to some extent by demonetisation. What I have been able to learn is that it has been received well by politicians, except the Opposition," Skinner said.

DEMONETISATION BOOST
Of course, it returned as much as 99 per cent of the large denomination notes within a year. So its objective of exposing the dirty money trail may not have been achieved. What demonetisation did do was drive the move towards mobile wallets and mobile payments and push those concepts through.
Skinner was effusive about the success of Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, whose aim is to make it India's largest bank with 500 million accounts by the end of the decade. "This would be driven and supported by Chinese players Alipay and Ant Financial. These is a lot of Ant Financial capabilities sitting behind Paytm." This is made possible by the plug-and-play software and open source structure. The figures speak for themselves for their combined success, Skinner said.

FINTECH INNOVATION
Paytm's user base of 130 million in October 2016, had grown to 250 million by October 2017 post-demonestisation. It is not as if it was the only innovation here that has interested Skinner, but the one he was closest to. The Aadhaar story is equally compelling.
On innovations in the fintech space, he said when we have banks doing things already, a lot of what comes out in terms of innovations are banking-like. "But when you have no banks doing anything to people, then what you have is completely new thinking. This is what is so exciting about Africa, Indonesia or the Philippines." Visits to countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia or South Africa, the Philippines or Indonesia have been revealing in this context, Skinner said.

Published on March 16, 2018