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, May 7, 2018

13466 - Aadhaar [Day 36]: There Is No Verification To Ensure That An individual Applying For Aadhaar Is A Bonafide Resident, Says Shyam Divan In His Rejoinder - Live Law



On Day 36 of the Aadhaar hearing i.e., Thursday, Attorney General KK Venugopal advanced submissions on the mandate of Aadhaar-SIM card linkage in the light of the February 6, 2017 order of the Supreme Court in Lokniti Foundation v. UOI. “How is the linking relatable to Section 7 (of the Aadhaar Act of 2016),” asked Justice DY Chandrachud....

Senior counsel Shyam Divan commenced rejoinder arguments on behalf of the petitioners: “After I ended my arguments on March 9, the Union filed an affidavit to which an expert report dated March 4 by Mr. Manindra Agarwal from IIT was appended…The Report says that the biometric database is accessible to third party vendors such as Morpho, L1, Accenture etc…This has now been expressly conceded…the report also says that leakage of the verification log can lead to forged identities and revealing of location…it may even result in leakage of location data, that is, the location of the places where the transactions were carried out…” ...

He pointed to Agarwal’s name on the Technology and Architecture Board as well as the Security Committee of the Aadhaar project. “This gentleman is therefore clearly very well versed in the ecology of Aadhaar,” commented Divan....

“The takeaways are that from the verification logs, you can trace location. Secondly, even without the verification logs, the current location can be tracked. Thirdly, the UIDAI knows the location. A third party, to know it, will have to breach the og. And fourthly, a breach of the log will yield the approximate location over five years,” summed up the senior counsel. 

“The report only says that you cannot have perfect security and that there may be a loss of privacy in the digital world…but but Aadhaar is not responsible for that…,” remarked Justice Chandrachud. ...

Responding to UIDAI CEO Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey’s PowerPoint presentation, Divan contended, “The presentation says that every registered biometric device will have traceability…This is to prevent fraud, but what it means is that you have an electronic trail which goes back to each device…” 

“On April 25, Rakesh Dwivedi (senior advocate; UIDAI and state of Gujarat) made the argument that the UIDAI and the CIDR are separate and autonomous, and unless there is a collusion, there would not be any surveillance. But the point is that the State cannot authorise an instrumentality which has such tremendous power and control…There is no Chinese Wall between the UIDAI and the State…,” he continued....

“The Aadhaar may be technologically brilliant, but is constitutionally impermissible…Fundamental Rights in Part III of the Constitution are too valuable to be sacrificed in this fashion…,” he submitted....

Moving on to the issue of balancing of interest, Divan advanced, “Like the Rubicon, there are certain rivers which, once you cross, you tip over into a very different situation…If the Court agrees that the Aadhaar is an engine for surveillance, there can be no question of balancing. The Constitution expressly rejects it”. 

“The march towards technology is inexorable. No court or government can stop it,” noted Justice Chandrachud, adding, “the human rights perspective is not only about privacy but also about securing benefits to the segment of society that could not access them earlier”....

“This is not a case where a person who was not receiving entitlements under welfare schemes earlier would begin to enjoy them now. The government’s case is that there are savings in the distribution of welfare benefits…,” responded Divan. ...

“The government’s case is that these savings can be utilized to reach people who are in need of the welfare benefits,” observed Justice Sikri....

“The Maastricht Guidelines have said that the issue is not the quantity of food, but access to food,” remarked Justice Chandrachud. “Access to food is a human right,” added Chief Justice Dipak Misra. ...

Thereupon, Divan drew the attention of the bench to the responses of the UIDAI to the queries posed by the petitioners in the light of the PowerPoint presentation- “The first question was to confirm that no UIDAI official conducts any verification at
the stage of enrolment…Another question sought to clarify that the UIDAI takes no responsibility for correct identification of a person…The ID number is being issued without any verification by the UIDAI. They do not even check whether the documents 
presented to the enrolment agencies are genuine or false. Also, the Authority shrugs off any responsibility in this behalf…The Aadhaar is essentially a self-declaration system of verification… Nobody in the government undertakes any verification in respect of such details as age and date of birth…this information is only derived from the data fed in at the time of enrolment…they have candidly admitted to it…it has also been conceded that the Aadhaar does not identify a person, but only effects a match…”...

“There is even no verification to ensure that the individual applying for Aadhaar is a bonafide resident, and not an illegal immigrant. An interim order of this Court dated September 23, 2013 specifically states that Aadhaar shall not be issued to to illegal immigrants. The UIDAI has confirmed that there is no verification of the satisfaction of the 180-day residence requirement. This is blatant disobedience of the apex court’s order,” he continued. ...

“Our next question was to confirm that Aadhaar is probabilistic as a means of identification. We had asked for numbers pertaining to rejections, but the specific question has not been answered. But if one individual succeeds once in six times, they perceive it as 100% success…However, they admitted that biometrics become increasingly unreliable with age…,” Divan concluded for the day. The hearing shall resume on Tuesday. This report is based on live tweets by Advocates Gautam Bhatia and Prasanna.S

Read more at: http://www.livelaw.in/aadhaar-day-36-there-is-no-verification-to-ensure-that-an-individual-applying-for-aadhaar-is-a-bonafide-resident-says-shyam-divan-in-his-rejoinder/