AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 15 - Are National ID Cards Going to Snuggle Up With Open ID?

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, May 21, 2010

15 - Are National ID Cards Going to Snuggle Up With Open ID?

20th Feb 2008
Are National ID Cards Going to Snuggle Up With Open ID?
20 Feb 2008 ... activity tracking schemes - what could be the consequences of using them. ... Does it matter that this could take away my free will? .... Where you see concerns around privacy and participation of non-citizens (which is a ... in an anonymous way to verify identity - this is what makes it unique. ...

The REAL ID Act of 2005 is said by some to pave the way for a United States National ID Card and has come under heavy criticism from a wide range of people in the US. Some recent developments indicate that a National ID card could be tied to the federated authentication standard called OpenID.

At the most basic level, this would mean that you could sign in with your National ID card to all the websites where today you can login with a Yahoo! or AIM or other OpenID. Hmmm...

The government of Estonia has already implemented a National ID system there that serves as an OpenID and now OpenID vendor TrustBearer is explicitly targeting the "national and government ID card" market. Were National ID cards and OpenID to become closely associated, there could be some very adverse consequences in terms of basic liberties - or it could end up just being very bad PR for OpenID. Below are some thoughts from a few players in the OpenID community.

The Possibilities

I asked Scott Kveton, Chair of the OpenID Foundation, what he thought of the two systems working together. "To tie an OpenID to a national id card," he said, "would allow you to prove a person was a person. If you could assert [online] things like 'yes, I am a US citizen' or 'i am over 18' - that would be insane for all kinds of different on-line services." Insane is right, Scott, that would be insanely awful. It is true that "single sign on" is just the very beginning of what Open ID makes possible, but tying it to instruments of citizenship does not bode well for privacy of citizens or the participation of non-citizens.

In addition to chairing the foundation, Kveton now works at OpenID provider Vidoop, a company made up largely of engineers with military backgrounds.

The Pitfalls

Paul Trevithick, Technology Lead at The Higgins Project, is not excited about the idea. He explains that you should only disclose as much identity as is needed for a given transaction. The IRS, a dating site and other contexts like banking or blogging each deserve a different, "non-coralatable ID". REAL ID is fully coralatable, Trevithick says. It should be noted that The Higgins Project is in the business of managing multiple IDs, so one single ID wouldn't serve their interests.

Identity consultant Kaliya Hamlin emphasized in response to the discussion that "there needs to be a broader conversation, that's why we need organizations like Identity Commons that can support technical and social conversations." Hamlin argued that Estonians are in a different cultural context because Europeans trust their governments much more than people in the US do.

None the less, Kveton argues that "there will be National ID some day and if we're going to tie it to something, it should be to something that is managed by the commons (like OpenID)."

Sounds like a bad idea to me. I think the benefit of Federated Identity, available through a wide variety of vendors, is that it defeats exactly the kinds of centralization and risk that National ID represents. I think the OpenID community should move away from National ID as quickly as possible.

What do you think?