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, January 10, 2014

4994 - Relax, CIA is not snooping into Aadhaar via MongoDB - First Post

by Samir Alam Dec 5, 2013 

Once again Aadhaar finds itself mired in shady discussions of privacy and security – and this time the CIA is involved. The Economic Times reports that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has contracted MongoDB – an American open source cross-platform document oriented database system startup, in an unspecified database management capacity. The otherwise innocuous business deal has suddenly reached espionage status since MongoDB is partially funded by the not-for-profit venture capital firm of the CIA called In-Q-Tel (IQT). 

The New York based company set up in 2007 known for its expertise with large database analytics and management, has 320 employees, 600 customers, market valuation of USD $1.2 billion and has just raised USD $150 million in its latest round of venture finding – of which the CIA’s In-Q-Tel subsidiary has contributed an unspecified sum. Reasons To Be Concerned? The concern over this deal is clearly based on the clandestine nature of the CIA and the valid concerns over security and privacy when dealing with the personal data of Indian citizens. It’s a genuine fear that in a post-Snowden world, the sanctity of international agreements on sovereignty and digital privacy not be taken for granted and scrutinized to ensure national autonomy. 
Image: ibnlive 

However, so far, none of the parties involved - IQT or MongoDB or the UIDAI have made a statement regarding this connection. And even though no specific information has been disclosed regarding the nature of the agreement between MongoDB and UIDAI or the nature of influence the CIO or IQT would have over MongoDB operations, it hasn’t stopped speculation to fill the void. Investigating the nature of this CIA entity presents us with an interesting start. 

IQT was established in September 1999 to “identity, adapt, and deliver innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the Central Intelligence Agency and broader U.S. Intelligence Community.” Since then it has invested in more than 175 companies and now publicly lists 90 actively engaged companies, of which MongoDB is one. In fact, the investment in MongoDB was publicly announced on 17 September 2013 and highlights the confidence IQT had in MongoDB’s technological offerings. “The ability to store and query both unstructured and structured data with performance at scale makes MongoDB an important addition to our strategic investment portfolio,” said Robert Ames, Vice President of Information and Communication Technologies at IQT in the release. “MongoDB is built to leverage big data and holds great promise for the development of new storage and processing capabilities.” It is a fair assumption that when UIDAI was looking for a solution to managing the information of over a billion people it went for the best and discovered this press release and knew that MongoDB had CIA money backing it. It is also fair to assume that in its talks two weeks ago with Max Schireson, the chief executive of MongoDB, the UIDAI expressed its concerns and sought clarifications. Of course, we are not privy to the internal dealings of governments and private companies, so the details still seem murky. Who Are IQT Anyway? Another manner to consider this concern is to look at the history of how the IQT has conducted business in the technology realm since its creation. In its early history prior to 1999, IQT existed as a division of CIA Directorate of Science and Technology and was concerned with bringing the technology quotient of the agency at par and ahead of the world. However, as technological innovation moved outside of universities and government think tanks in to the private sector, it made sense for the CIA to also become involved, but it could no longer do so in secret. “We decided to use our limited dollars to leverage technology developed elsewhere. In 1999 we chartered…In-Q-Tel…While we pay the bills, In-Q-Tel is independent of CIA,” said George Tenet, former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the CIA in his book At the Centre of the Storm. “CIA identifies pressing problems, and In-Q-Tel provides the technology to address them. The In-Q-Tel alliance has put the Agency back at the leading edge of technology,” it noted. Since then IQT has invested in companies that have gone on to become mainstream, such as facial recognitions softwares used in Las Vegas casinos, big data webcrawlers that companies like Amazon use to make readership recommendations and many others across the board investments involved in technology areas like communications, cyber security, data analytics, videos and imaging and much more. The most well known of which is Google Earth – developed by a company called Keyhole – partially owned by IQT and then acquired by Google. A Failure of Common Sense? Just like most venture capital firms, IQT also invests and divests its interests in technology enterprises while adapting and adopting the technologies that it funds. IQT and the CIA between them possess sizable budgets, expertise and vision to know how different technologies can be used for national defense purposes. In the scheme of these investments, MongoDB is a small fish - an open source solution that can be adapted and scaled for different databases, it is independently used and commercially licensed which significantly diminishes potential for back doors. Its potential for clandestine operations is nearly non-existent unless Indian agencies take software that is handed to them without so much as an anti-virus check by its own clandestine organisations like the National Technical Research Organisation (part of RAW). So the idea that the CIA is covertly back dooring its way in to the UIDAI via MongoDB seems a bit premature and frankly, absurd. And if we expect the CIA to have a tap on the personal information of Indian citizens then we might as well fear Samsung. If not for reasons that its devices simply hold more personal information of Indian users due to its market penetration, then for it’s investment in Cloudant – a cloud based mobile provider that is also partially funded by In-Q-Tel and soon to be part of the mainstream Samsung cloud network. There are far more serious technologies foreign intelligence agencies have made that should give us cause for concern like – the TOR network, created by the US Navy and used by Bitcoin fans world over or miniature flying drones being developed by the US Air Force or the series of interconnected computer network made by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, United States Department of Defense – commonly known as “the internet”.