AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 5202 - The Aadhaar hype is no substitute for real results

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, February 27, 2014

5202 - The Aadhaar hype is no substitute for real results - UK Mail

The Aadhaar hype is no substitute for real results

By RAJEEV CHANDRASEKHAR

PUBLISHED: 23:49 GMT, 16 February 2014 | UPDATED: 23:49 GMT, 16 February 2014

The Aadhaar scheme has already cost a fortune, but without much real justification (file picture)

One of the defining attributes of the UPA government has been its almost casual / unaccountable approach to spending public money on 'programmes'.

UID, aka "Aadhaar," is one such programme – costing the taxpayers thousands of crores so far - but with little thinking on specifics, outcomes, and with extraordinary amounts of hype and rhetoric.

Sadly, the rhetoric hasn't been given a chance in all these years to be challenged in Parliament or outside within the public, despite calls for it, thus allowing the hype to go untested on its merits.

Despite the lack of debate and the Parliamentary Standing Committee's serious recommendations on this, the spending on this 'Flagship programme' has gone on.

ID truth

Let me say as someone who understands technology, governance and the issue of corruption more than just a little, that Aadhaar, in its current form, is a house of cards and resting primarily on hype, and will not achieve any of the laudable objectives of eradicating corruption.

This will become obvious to many as the layers of hype are peeled off, revealing the reality. Here's an abridged dose of reality:

(1.) Aadhaar does not give identities to Indians

The fundamental claim is that Aadhaar gives an Identity to all Indians. This is the most explosive falsehood in the Aadhaar proposition.

Aadhaar simply takes an existing ID (real or fake), of anybody (citizen or foreigner or illegal immigrant) and issues a number, i.e., there is no identity verification, and so, there is no identity being issued. All Aadhaar does is link the potentially fake or true ID information to that ID holder's iris or Biometric information.

So if Mr. X had a fake ID all these years with his picture and address, he now continues that fake ID, albeit with his iris and biometric instead of his photo. There is no way of knowing how many fake entries are in the Aadhaar database, because Aadhaar does no verification.

Worse, Aadhaar uses a structure that is incentivized to generate fake applications. This structure uses small private firms which almost subjectively decide on identity documentation, with no check on their capability or background for enrollment, and UID/Aadhaar can be legitimately accused of being negligent in exercising no supervision of their activities.

I specifically asked a question in Parliament about instances of fraud in Aadhaar and the government has so far ducked answering it.

More...

Aadhaar under fire in Supreme Court as petitioners seek to 'opt out'

(2.) Aadhaar is a national security risk; it's being issued to non-citizens and illegal immigrants

Aadhaar has changed its tagline recently to 'One India; One Identity' – again a dishonesty. It makes no effort at separating citizens from non-citizens.

Any national identification platform should be able to determine who is a citizen and who isn't. What arises from this is that taxpayer-funded subsidies and cash transfers will be availed by non-citizens and illegal immigrants.

In a recent meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, I asked the UIDAI - 'how many non-citizens were given Aadhaar?', and I was given an answer of 'we don't know'.

Security risk

The Aadhaar project is also facing a challenge from the Intelligence Bureau, over the UIDAI issuing the card to foreigners and refugees from other countries. This comes on the heels of a Supreme Court order on 23.09.2013 that an Aadhaar card can't be issued to an "illegal immigrant".

So the bottom-line is - Given the unverified identities at the enrollment stage, issuance to non-citizens and illegal immigrants, and a technology that has serious question marks - Aadhaar is creating a database that has serious information integrity issues.

This, in turn, leads to several dangerous issues that arise – especially when it is bandied about casually as 'The Identity' – in terms of national security, citizenship and many issues that flow from that. Citizenship as defined by our Constitution has to be verified and not accepted on declaration.

In its current form, Aadhaar cannot be an identity.

(3.) Aadhaar does not improve targeting of benefits and subsidies; increases costs

The fundamental use of Aadhaar, that of identifying citizens that are entitled to specific benefits, falls flat. Because it continues to use the same historical data that is causing the corruption and leakage.

In fact, the LPG cylinder issue is a clear case where Aadhaar has proved that it is not helping leakages. In ATM banking, by insisting that banks upgrade to biometric ATMs whose costs will be passed onto consumers, banking costs will increase.

(4.) Aadhaar raises significant privacy issues

Aadhaar involves collection of a large amount of people's data and centralization of this data in their databases. Predictably, real issues of privacy arise, in a country like ours, where privacy laws are not robust and the issue itself not fully or adequately debated.

The privacy issue is even more dangerous given the track record of Governments and bureaucrats in India.

Reality check

To call Aadhaar "technological leadership" is surely letting the hype get hugely ahead of reality. Aadhaar is a data collection exercise and creation of a biometric database. That's it. Further, it uses foreign hardware and software, and technologies that may have question marks.

Technologically, it is not unique; it has been done before elsewhere. Even the size and scale of this data collection has been done before - by Election Commission, Census and NPR which have received none of the publicity that the Aadhaar effort has.

Aadhaar started with good intentions, but it is mystifying why it has morphed into this. It could have been a demonstration of technology being deployed in a cost-effective way to improve governance, and deliver benefits through a robust citizen identification process and highly reliable database, instead of what it is.

Taxpayers need to ask why this expensive programme has not been discussed in Parliament and why is the government reluctant to accept Standing Committee's recommendations?

If Aadhaar is a part of the 'vision' of the 'new' Congress leadership then, hype and rhetoric are no substitute for real targets and outcomes. Both vision and solutions need to be real and money spent on them justifiable. Neither is true in Aadhaar.

The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP

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