By Subir Ghosh Aug 31, 2011 3:09AM UTC
A circular issued by the Kerala government directing the public education department to deploy online school management software called Sampoorna in schools across the state has drawn flak from civil liberties activists.
According to the circular, details of as many as 6 million students spanning over 15,000 schools in the state would be captured in this scheme. All schoolchildren will soon have unique identification numbers (UID), which will help in tracking their movements in educational institutions and academic records. The circular says, “The headmasters of the schools should ensure that all students have filled in the forms before 31/08/2011, ordered by class and division. The education officers are directed to monitor these explicitly.”
In a complaint filed with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, civil society activists Kamayani Bali Mahabal , Anivar Aravind and Usha Ramanathan drew attention to the fact that a law to govern the UID project is yet to be passed by Parliament. The National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010 was introduced in Parliament on December 3, 2010, and sent to the Standing Committee of Finance on 20th December 2010. The committee has reportedly expressed serious reservations about the project. The project is, in other words, currently operating outside the protection of law.
“It has been acknowledged that there are abiding concerns about privacy that the project has to address before it can be allowed to proceed. There is a draft Privacy Bill that has not yet been introduced in Parliament. There are no protections that the law provides. There are no protocols about who can access the information, how the UID number may be used, what will happen if there is identity theft and identity loss. There are no protections against tracking and profiling. The collection of biometrics increases the concern,” they said.
“There is no means of controlling the recording and retrieval of data about children, and that is especially serious since our jurisprudence clearly states that the records relating to children except public exam marks should not be carried into adulthood. This is especially important where the child has had a difficult growing up and may have encountered problems of being a ‘neglected child’ or a ‘child in conflict with the law’. These are specifically proscribed from being carried into adulthood, with good reason. The UID, with its ability to link up data bases poses a threat to this important area of personal safety and protection of the child.”
The question of informed consent is an important element in public policy; kindly consider what the choicelessness imposed on parents as also the children means in the enforcing of public policy, they contended.
The complaint also said, “As parents, we make decisions for our children on a daily basis. Some will affect their lives for the next few minutes; others will potentially affect the rest of their lives. When replacing any existing system, it is often easier to see how a new system fixes the shortcomings in the existing system, but often it is the case that any new system also comes with its own set of weaknesses some of which were not immediately evident.”
According to the circular, details of as many as 6 million students spanning over 15,000 schools in the state would be captured in this scheme. All schoolchildren will soon have unique identification numbers (UID), which will help in tracking their movements in educational institutions and academic records. The circular says, “The headmasters of the schools should ensure that all students have filled in the forms before 31/08/2011, ordered by class and division. The education officers are directed to monitor these explicitly.”
In a complaint filed with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, civil society activists Kamayani Bali Mahabal , Anivar Aravind and Usha Ramanathan drew attention to the fact that a law to govern the UID project is yet to be passed by Parliament. The National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010 was introduced in Parliament on December 3, 2010, and sent to the Standing Committee of Finance on 20th December 2010. The committee has reportedly expressed serious reservations about the project. The project is, in other words, currently operating outside the protection of law.
“It has been acknowledged that there are abiding concerns about privacy that the project has to address before it can be allowed to proceed. There is a draft Privacy Bill that has not yet been introduced in Parliament. There are no protections that the law provides. There are no protocols about who can access the information, how the UID number may be used, what will happen if there is identity theft and identity loss. There are no protections against tracking and profiling. The collection of biometrics increases the concern,” they said.
“There is no means of controlling the recording and retrieval of data about children, and that is especially serious since our jurisprudence clearly states that the records relating to children except public exam marks should not be carried into adulthood. This is especially important where the child has had a difficult growing up and may have encountered problems of being a ‘neglected child’ or a ‘child in conflict with the law’. These are specifically proscribed from being carried into adulthood, with good reason. The UID, with its ability to link up data bases poses a threat to this important area of personal safety and protection of the child.”
The question of informed consent is an important element in public policy; kindly consider what the choicelessness imposed on parents as also the children means in the enforcing of public policy, they contended.
The complaint also said, “As parents, we make decisions for our children on a daily basis. Some will affect their lives for the next few minutes; others will potentially affect the rest of their lives. When replacing any existing system, it is often easier to see how a new system fixes the shortcomings in the existing system, but often it is the case that any new system also comes with its own set of weaknesses some of which were not immediately evident.”
