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

Thursday, November 25, 2010

864 - UID - Another big scam -Watch out for CIA & FBI Agents Involvement - Sangh Parivar

Submitted by rashtrapremi on Fri, 11/19/2010 - 12:45. Political Discussion
Is the UID system a potential threat to national security and sovereignty?
November 18, 2010 05:42 PM |
Samir Kelekar

A recent deal for the purchase of biometric scanners from a US-based company, which has worked closely with American intelligence agencies, raises serious questions on the security of data in the Aadhaar project
Could the Aadhaar project, touted as a critical requirement for development, turn into a threat to the country's national security and sovereignty?

It was recently reported that L-1 Identity Solutions, a US-based company which is now being bought by a French company, has been given a $25 million order for biometric scanners. This was among the deals announced by the White House during the visit of president Barak Obama to India a fortnight ago. In fact, president Obama, for the same reason, also blessed the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) with a visit to the innovation forum event in Mumbai where he even had a chat with UIDAI's tech head.

In the case of any other commercial deal this would not have raised eyebrows. But it is the background of L-1 Identity Solutions that raises questions. L-1 has close ties with US intelligence agencies. Read what a report says about L-1: "I will start by mentioning that Louis Freeh (former director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation), Admiral Loy (former head of the Transportation Security Agency), George Tenet (former director of the Central Intelligence Agency), Frank Moss (former program manager for the State Department's E-Passport program), and many others who previously held key positions in the federal government, all joined Viisage/L-1 as members of the Board of Directors or as paid employees of Viisage/L-1. It must be really sweet to sign off on contracts worth millions of dollars, tens of millions or more in fact, and then turn right around and go on the payroll of the same company that you awarded the contracts to. Sure, Tenet, Freeh and the others may not have had to sign the actual contracts but certainly they are responsible for knowing who the contracts went to when they were in charge of their respective agencies and departments.

"L-1 dominates the state driver's license business. L-1 also produces all passport cards, involved in the production of all passports, provides identification documents for the Department of Defense and has contracts with nearly every intelligence agency in our government. To a large extent it is fair to say that your personal information is L-1's information. L-1 is the same company that thinks our political party affiliation should be on our driver's license along with our race. L-1 has a long history starting with its taking over Viisage Technology. It was a great sleight of hand, Viisage morphing into L-1 while Viisage was under investigation by our government," the report said. Tenet, the former CIA director who was later on the board of L-1, was accused of passing on false information concerning Iraq's WMD (weapons of mass destruction) capabilities which led to the Iraq war. In the new world of surveillance that is emerging, L-1 is turning out to be very powerful, a multi-national giant which can potentially have control over countries. How, some skeptics might ask. Is this one more bogey by the activist lobby? Recently, L-1 has bagged orders from France as well as China.

UIDAI has been professing open standards. But the contract to L-1 is a slap in the face of its professed policy. By now, it is clear that UIDAI does not keep the promises it makes, so this does won't surprise anyone.In the absence of a thorough audit of source code-the only way in which one can be sure-a backdoor can be easily inserted in any of the biometric scanners. This backdoor can not only transfer biometrics data to the vendor's database and to UIDAI's database, but it can also shut down the scanner at will. So, if the UIDAI project goes through and the biometric scanners and UIDAI's infrastructure becomes ubiquitous to the point that every financial transaction in the country requires a biometric scanner, it doesn't require a scientist to tell us that this is equivalent to handling the nation's economy in the hands of foreign companies. The danger posed to the nation's economy is no less than that from foreign companies controlling our telecom infrastructure.

In the case of telecom, after a lot of noise, some action is being taken. It is another matter whether the action taken is good enough or not. But no amount of charisma on the part of the UIDAI chairman can fix this problem which could affect the sovereignty of the nation. The only way out is to ask all vendors of biometric equipment to open their source code and subject it to thorough audit by experts. That is how countries such as China would handle similar situations. Recently, China asked Microsoft to reveal its source code and Microsoft complied. The US too secures its own nationalistic interests properly. Sometime back the US stopped the sale of Tipping Point, a US security company, to a Chinese firm on the grounds of securing national interests.

Further, there could well be a vendor lock-in. L-1 has been on a buying spree, taking over smaller biometric companies. It is quite possible that it buys off other biometric vendors of UIDAI, resulting in a virtual monopoly, which could lead it to hike the prices for upgrades. What checks and balances has UIDAI got to ensure that this does not happen? More important, will the checks and balances, if any, stay or will they be dropped as time passes, for UIDAI's statements cannot be trusted as evidenced from its past actions. Coming to the Unique Identification Number (UID), there has been misinformation by UIDAI that the social security number (SSN) of the US is equivalent to the UID in India. This is not the truth. The SSN does not have your biometrics, it is just a number.

The US is trying to introduce something called the Real ID, which has biometrics, and this is being stiffly resisted by Americans. As of 2008, over 20 legislatures in the US had passed resolutions (or legislation) opposing the implementation of the Real ID Act. Eleven of those legislatures had gone further, by passing laws specifically prohibiting compliance with Real ID. What is sauce for the goose may not be sauce for the gander. Will the Indian authorities wake up and investigate this critical aspect before it is too late?

(The author has a B Tech from IIT Bombay, and a PhD from Columbia University, New York. He currently runs a start-up, Teknotrends Software Pvt Ltd that does cutting-edge work in the area of network security).