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, April 20, 2018

13317 - AADHAAR: Fading Fingerprints Mean This Ageing Space Scientist Can't Care For His Son - Huffington Post


"There are not many of us of alive; you can't ignore us."

By Indrani Basu

MANSI THAPLIYAL / REUTERS

Radha, 75, a vegetable vendor, poses with her hands after she got her fingerprint scanned for the Unique Identification (UID) database system at an enrolment centre at Merta district in the Indian state of Rajasthan on February 22, 2013.

For 54 years, Chandrasekhar hasn't been able to move from his bed. Born with a 97% physical and mental disability, he can't communicate with anyone. His parents have taken care of him his entire life. But now his future is uncertain.

"We have come to realise he might survive us," said P.V. Manoranjan Rao, Chandrasekhar's 81-year-old father. "But whenever I try to make some arrangement for my son, I fail."
Rao is a space scientist who retired as the Group Director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre of the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) in 1996. Unlike most octogenarians, he is comfortable with technology. But now technology — specifically biometrics — is failing him.

Last year Rao, who lives in Thiruvananthapuram, sought to add his son's name to one of his bank accounts, so Chandrasekhar's care that could continue without Rao and his wife Anjali's active involvement.

But Rao's fingerprints could not be read by the bank's biometric machine, and he couldn't link his account to Aadhaar and add his son's name. He tried to get an Aadhaar card for his son, but officials were unable to record Chandrasekhar's fingerprints and iris scan. Chandrasekhar's application for Aadhaar is still "under process" according to the Aadhaar website, Rao said.

"Aging results in loss of collagen; compared to younger skin, aging skin is loose and dry. Decreased skin firmness directly affects the quality of fingerprints acquired by sensors."

Biometric authentication forms the cornerstone of India's controversial universal identification project, also known as Aadhaar. Repeated government directives have pushed millions of Indians to try to link their Aadhaar with essential services like bank accounts and mobile telephones. Yet, most biometrics, particularly fingerprints, degrade with age as skin loses its elasticity, according to experts. Thus, while the fingerprints remain the same — it becomes harder for machines to recognise and match the prints of the elderly.

The "difference in fingerprint image quality across age groups, is most pronounced in the 62-and-older age group," according to Impact of Age Groups on Fingerprint Recognition Performance, a paper by Shimon K. Modi, Stephen J. Elliott, Jeff Whetsone, and Hakil Kim at the College of Technology at Purdue University. "Aging results in loss of collagen; compared to younger skin, aging skin is loose and dry. Decreased skin firmness directly affects the quality of fingerprints acquired by sensors."

For senior citizens like Rao, the deterioration of his fingerprints has meant he and his disabled son could soon be locked out of their bank accounts.

"It is humiliating to get an Aadhaar card for my son," Rao said, describing how Aadhaar officials struggled for an hour to get a legible thumbprint from Chandrashekar. "I do not feel like begging anybody. There is a limit to how much you can appeal to people."


MANSI THAPLIYAL / REUTERS

A villager goes through the process of a fingerprint scanner for the Unique Identification (UID) database system at an enrolment centre at Merta district in the desert Indian state of Rajasthan February 22, 2013.

The looming uncertainty of his son's future has pushed Rao to petition the Supreme Court to allow Indians over 75 years of age to access Aadhaar services — an ever growing list — without biometric authentication. Senior citizens should only need to produce a self-certified copy of their Aadhaar card to access services, Rao requested the apex court.
He is yet to receive an acknowledgement of his petition, he said.

"There are not many of us alive," he said, referring to his fellow senior citizens. "You can't ignore us."

Exclusion
Biometric deterioration means the elderly are the most vulnerable to Aadhaar exclusion. Rani Devi, a 69-year-old woman from Rajasthan's Barmer district, has been unable to access subsidised food under the government-mandated public distribution system since September last year.

"They can't read my thumb impression in the machine," she said, and so can't verify her identity with her Aadhaar card. Without linking the two, they have refused to give her monthly ration.

"There are not many of us (above the age of 75) alive," he said. "You can't ignore us."
-PV Manoranjan Rao, 81

Meanwhile in Maharashtra, 84-year-old N.V. Padmanabhan can't update his Aadhaar because his fingerprints have become illegible with age. He had signed up for Aadhaar soon after the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was established in 2009. At the time, his initials were enough to process the Aadhaar card, his son Ravi said.

But after it became mandatory to have the card holder's full name on the document, Ravi had to take his ill father to an Aadhaar centre.

"He stood in line to give his fingerprints," recalled Ravi. "But a week later we were told the fingerprints were illegible because of his advanced age." They went to another centre, where though his name was updated, they have still not received an updated card and they cannot track what happened to their application.


THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
A public hearing in New Delhi organized by the Right to Food campaign, where people from around India came to speak about how Aadhaar authentication problems were preventing them from getting food rations, on March 15, 2018.

In New Delhi, 82-year-old retired government employee R.M. Swami lost his phone number earlier this year after his fingerprints didn't match the biometric data recorded for Aadhaar three years ago. He had tried to port his Reliance Communications phone number to Airtel after the former telecom company announced its plans to shut down. But because of the new requirement to link Aadhaar to your mobile number — despite it being still deliberated by the Supreme Court — Swami could not keep the number, his son Mukesh said.

Swami finally got a new phone number using his wife Ratna Devi's fingerprint. Curiously, his 76-year-old wife's fingerprints cannot be recorded by their bank, which accepts Swami's thumb impression.

These stories are common across the country. Though the UIDAI acknowledges these problems, and individual officials have attempted to solve these problems on a case-by-case basis, there is no centralised solution easily accessible for the elderly. Telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan had promised last year to introduce iris scans instead of fingerprints for linking mobile numbers to Aadhaar cards for senior citizens. Last week, the government said it would allow people to access their pensions without needing Aadhaar or give their fingerprints, but pensioners and their caregivers say any changes are yet to be implemented.

"If the government is making Aadhaar mandatory then they should also make it easy," said Ravi Padmanabhan, whose ill father has to make a trip to the bank each year to get an annual certificate to get his pension. "No help is being given and it's hard to get any response."

Aadhaar Enrolment system has provision to enrol even a person with ill-defined fingerprints or missing biometrics. #AadhaarForAll pic.twitter.com/WqiiKBFjjp


I had approached with a similar request for my dad which was not even acknowledged. Do what you commit or don't publish such things.
Meanwhile, Rao has taken to writing letters to anyone who will listen, hoping that his Supreme Court petition will help solve the problem for elderly people.

"I ask my friends to forward my letter to somebody who wields some power," said Rao. "And solve this problem created by the government insensitive to old people."
"I understand governments are impersonal," said Rao. "But you just need a human heart and minimum respect for elderly people."