Very Valuable Blog with heaps of information
http://risingcitizen.blogspot.com/2010/06/update-on-unique-id-project-aadhaar.html
Ram
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
UNIQUE ID is the greatest, toughest and the most complex test for Indian software industry's expertise and efficiency. If India is the world's software services mecca, Unique Id is its biggest challenge to show its prowess. UID can bring out a social transformation never seen before and if it fails, it will be the biggest disaster in Indian software industry.
There are literally millions of people across India who cannot get a SIM card, cannot get a ration card, cannot get a PAN card, can't open a bank account simply because there is no proof of their identity. On the other end millions of people manage to get fake Driver Licenses, fake Ration cards, fake Electoral ID and even fake PAN. This is a headache not only for govt and government agencies, but also for Election Commission. One of the main reasons corruption thrives is also because of this extremity.
Some STARTLING STATISTICS:
India has
70 million PAN cards
60 million passports
90 million Drivers License
240 million bank account holders
170 million LIC policy holders
150 million Below Poverty Line cards (BPL)
Quick Update:
In my earlier article, Unique Id is it worth it?, I did mention that there are huge challenges in implementation, technology, storage and usage. The project though has gone far ahead from then till now and there is a proper structure with efficient people, and honest officials and have already begun to implement the Unique Id in certain districts and villages.
Very recently, there was a competition which received 2000 entries and finally the logo was unveiled by a farmer and the project was named AADHAAR - which means support.
Tumkur, Mysore, Nalanda (Bihar), some villages in Andhra - the pilot biometric collection has been kicked off. The targets that are set up are 2500 profiles within 20 days and so forth.
Note: I made all tables below based on several articles in paper and news media.
Here's a detailed technical paper as to how and why unique Id's will be generated and how it will include alpha numerals in the numbers
For these, refer to Documents section under http://uid.gov.in/. There are lots of documents, memorandums of understandings, how the process will be executed and so forth.
THE SCOPE AND POTENTIAL OF UID DATA:
While UID will not be mandatory, slowly everyone will mandate the usage forcing everyone to have one. The ENROLLMENT FEE IS Rs. 25. However, the coastal and border region inhabitants will have to mandatorily enroll to know who is an illegal immigrant and who is not. This is very crucial. The non-availability of distinction is one of the main reasons a lot of terrorists escape.
A crucial area where UID is expected to make wonders is the way of identifying extremely poor people (people below poverty line or BPL). Once their biometrics are identified, the systems will be changed to ensure it is only those who get the real welfare benefits like food, subsidized kerosene, employment benefits, etc. Even if UID is able to achieve a 15% change, it will force it to become more than 70% as Govt would want to call itself transparent and garner votes. 42% malnutrition and 75% of Indian children suffer from anemia - data is enough to understand how corruption cuts off the real beneficiaries from Govt's welfare programs.
Another huge scope of this project is bringing banking to people who are outside its gambit. Almost 50% of people don't have any bank account. Even if we reach 100 million through UID, it would have done great wonders to Indian economy and people. Currently, government has mandated all wages, government payments, pensions, compensations, etc to be dispersed only through bank accounts. But with absence of bank accounts, corruption thrives and there is no way to track them. Hence, RBI has tied up with UID so that it can provide banking services to all those whose names enter UID database.
LIC has tied with UID to share its database to ensure the UID can verify the identity as majority of them would not give wrong address on an insurance policy.
Income Tax is planning to issue biometric PAN once UID is in place so that the number of fake PAN will reduce.
Rampant corruption has plagued those places where people work as laborers under Rural Employment Gaurantee Program and the govt has decided to use biometric verification to plug the leaks in wages being sent to people who do not have bank accounts.
What would be the attributes of Unique Id?
If you notice, Unique Id will only act as an identification service. So, it can be used as a web service and interfaced with all other agencies and govt/private organizations to verify people in their respective databases are indeed the right people. So, UID won't store more than this, but is going to be the single point of confirmation/verification for all departments and agencies.
So,what is the enrollment procedure?
The process is explained visually from the document published on the site,
If you notice there is the usage of the word "registrar" which could be any agency/organization which can help in verification. These are (could be more than the list below) listed as below:
The real open ended questions are many. Some of them that struck my mind are as below:
How will UID be generated for people who have no identifiable documents? They will be introduced into the system without proper identification. In some villages the only verification registrar used is panachayat offices and Election Commission records. But will all those records be genuine? If not (so many are full of errors), what is the way the person will be identified other than by generating a number for them?
No one knows how much personal information will be exposed and to whom and how. It can be serious privacy breach. Hence, Nilekani is working towards a draft legislation which has to be passed in Parliament and there is going to be a fierce discussion on this.
Can states misuse the info if they are allowed to manipulate?
Who will be given read-only access?
What private agencies can share this data and what rules govern their usage?
Will people remember their 12 digit number?
When the verification step is involved, will it be done against all the registrars or only a few of them?
If few are involved, will it be genuine? If all are involved, will it not be an overkill?
One of the listed registrars is Gas agencies. How can gas agencies verify if they don't have any computerized mechanism? Definitely, not all have it.
All other agencies which plan to use UID will have to modify their softwares (if at all they have) to adapt to the data in the format UID will provide. This may be a headache only for banks as only they have computerization to the maximum extent.
Plans of promoting UID Enrollment:
Practical Challenges Seen in the Pilot test in selected villages:
Interesting Case Studies can be read here
Who is providing the biometric gadgets to this project?
An Indian based company 4G Identity Solutions: Website: http://www.4gid.com/
Florida based Crossmatch Technologies. Website: http://www.crossmatch.com/
Source:
Why this Blog ? News articles in the Wide World of Web, quite often disappear with time, when they are relocated as archives with a different url. Archives in this blog serve as a library for those who are interested in doing Research on Aadhaar Related Topics. Articles are published with details of original publication date and the url.
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
