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

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

1611 - Response to UIDAI's clarification by R.RAMAKUMAR - The Hindu

R. RAMAKUMAR

R.S. Sharma's response (“UIDAI clarifies on Aadhaar,” Op-Ed Page, Sept.15) to my article titled “Aadhaar: On a platform of myths” (Edit Page, July 18) demands comprehensive rebuttal. In my article, I had raised three arguments related to Aadhaar. In these three respects, I characterised the arguments of the government as “myths”. Mr. Sharma tries to refute my arguments and calls them “half-truths”. This response is to challenge Mr. Sharma to point out where exactly are the half-truths in my article.

My first argument was on the compulsoriness of Aadhaar, sought to be thrust through its linkages with the Home Ministry's National Population Register (NPR). I stand by it. The NPR is a part of the larger Multi-purpose National Identity Card (MNIC) project, begun after the Kargil war to cleanse India of “illegal immigration”. Registration in the NPR is compulsory. The information about individuals that is compulsorily required in the NPR includes a “National Identity Number”. It is the UIDAI's mandate to provide de-duplicated ID numbers to the NPR; and the ID number that would appear in the NPR will be the Aadhaar number. To quote Home Minister P. Chidambaram: “The MNIC has to be issued to every citizen, for which the Government has decided to set up a UID authority.

However, there is no mention of the collection of biometrics of individuals in Citizenship Rules 2003, which empowers the NPR. The collection of biometrics was stealthily made part of the NPR sometime after 2003. This stealth measure allowed the UIDAI to piggyback on NPR, thus allowing for quick enrolment. Mr. Sharma's effort is to hide this link, by stating that Registrar-General of India is just one of UIDAI's many Registrars. But are not the RGI and the UIDAI arms of the same government? Or, is it that the UIDAI considers control of “illegal immigration” as a “developmental initiative”?

Secondly, at four places in his response, Mr. Sharma states that Aadhaar is not comparable with identity initiatives in the West. At no place, however, does he state what the specific problem in such a comparison is. Mr. Sharma cherry-picks from the U.S. federal statute to make his overstretched claim that the Social Security Number (SSN) is necessitated by law in the U.S. Yet, he neatly overlooks my arguments based on the U.S. President's “Strategic Plan” in 2007, which aimed to reduce/eliminate the use of SSN to identify individuals. How can Mr. Sharma claim that the SSN has “evolved” into a “de-facto identifier” in the U.S., when its own President is trying to reduce/eliminate its use?

Thirdly, Mr. Sharma' position that biometric technology has “limitations” and will be used only “as appropriate and as required” represents an enormous climb-down from the UIDAI's earlier claims that biometric errors are insignificant. It is plausible that this climb-down is inspired by the enormous difficulties faced by the UIDAI in de-duplication and the rising costs therein.

There is much to write about errors of biometrics, but it would suffice here to state that the UIDAI's Biometric Standards Committee had listed the limitations of this technology in its 2009 report. While noting the possibility of high error rates in using fingerprints under normal conditions, this report had shied away from providing any estimates of error in the use of IRIS images, owing to the “absence of empirical Indian data”. It suggested the use of IRIS images only “if they [the UIDAI] feel it is required”.

However, this cautionary note did not prevent the UIDAI from plunging into IRIS data collection, even as no cost-benefit analysis for the overall project is anywhere in sight. Will anyone in the government stand up and be accountable for these spending decisions?

(R. Ramakumar is with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)