AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 2111 - UID chill no big deal for IT, government loses face

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, December 16, 2011

2111 - UID chill no big deal for IT, government loses face - DNA

Published: Friday, Dec 16, 2011, 8:00 IST

By Suparna Goswami Bhattacharya

Place: Bangalore | Agency: DNA

A parliamentary panel rejecting the Unique Identity (UID) Bill may have come as a big setback for the UPA government. But for the IT industry, the impact seems minimal, at least from a monetary point of view.

Looking at the bigger picture, the Bill if passed - and it’s a big if — would mean Rs16,000 crore worth of projects for the industry as a whole. But for an individual vendor, the figure doesn’t translate into much. The whole idea behind peddling that number was primarily to speed up the work.

Accenture, Wipro, MindTree, HP and TCS are among the IT players which have been awarded the contracts, which include design, development and maintenance of intranet and management portals, according to the official website of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The mandate for them was to build an ecosystem around various UID projects.

The first UID contract to become a consulting partner for UIDAI is of the size of Rs7.05 crore, which has gone to consultancy firm Ernst & Young.

The contract size for Bangalore-based MindTree, which was among the first companies to strike such a deal, was Rs19 crore. Though no one from MindTree could be reached for an official confirmation, earlier reports suggest that it outbid Accenture.

Another IT major, Wipro, was awarded two deals this year — one in February and the other in May.

“The contracts awarded to IT companies were never big in size. Hence, I do not see any big impact on their balancesheet. Though they might have deployed a big human resource team, it can easily be shifted to some other project. Basically the assets can be easily mobilised,” said Kishan Bhat, engagement manager, Zinnov, a leading management consulting company.

In the same vein, Bhat clarified that the short term is a different play altogether and so, it’s difficult to gauge long-term ramifications.

If the Bill falls through, it will have a cascading effect on various other government initiatives as companies may try to steer clear of them. “E-governance is the way forward. The government should make all efforts to make it work even if it means to make little changes here and there,” said an expert on condition of anonymity. He added that though IT companies have little to lose as they have other big projects in hand, it is the government which has a lot at stake.

Though some felt that a UIDAI freeze may lead to some increase in costs for companies, most others declined to validate the same. The parliamentary committee headed by former finance minister Yashwant Sinha has pointed to several loopholes in the existing Bill and urged the government to “reconsider and review the UID scheme as also the proposals contained in the Bill”. The committee raised concerns about privacy, identity theft, misuse, security of data during the implementation of the UID scheme.