AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 5823 - Is a babu at work? You can check in real time

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

Sunday, October 12, 2014

5823 - Is a babu at work? You can check in real time - TNN

Is a babu at work? You can check in real time

Kim Arora, TNN | Oct 8, 2014, 05.40AM IST

NEW DELHI: Tracking the attendance of ministers and babus from central government departments and ministries in real-time is possible now. The recently-launched government website, attendance.gov.in, shows attendance details of nearly 50,000 employees across 148 organisations (figures as of Tuesday afternoon), and the figures are expected to grow.

The data indicates not only whether a particular officer is present or not, but also the time s/he signed in and signed out.

The website and the system architecture have been developed by a team from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) under the direction of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY). The website is currently in its trial phase, and will soon see a formal launch.

The data indicates not only whether a particular officer is present or not, but also the time s/he signed in and signed out, the number of entries on each biometric machine installed in an office and whether it is active or inactive. The home page of the website is a dashboard which features a real-time "attendance activity" graph, number of employees authenticated and registered for the biometric attendance system, number of active devices and more.

More detailed data shows individual employee timings, along with their pictures, e-mail addresses, and attendance timings. On an individual employee page, one can also see a month-long graph indicating present days, holidays and days when an employee was absent. For example, for Gulshan Rai, director general of Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) had an "in time" of 09:26 am on Tuesday morning.

The employees' biometric details are linked to UID or Aadhaar. The web portal is meant to act as a centralized management information system for attendance, and is currently active for Delhi offices. "The details are forwarded from the local server to the UIDAI for verification. Then, the attendance is recorded. The average response time for this process is currently 1.5 seconds," says R S Sharma, secretary at the DeitY, adding that they are seeing a "huge amount of discipline in the trial phase itself." Sharma was the principal Secretary of the science and technology department of the Jharkhand state government, where a similar attendance portal is in place at the state level.

Venkaiah Naidu at a surprise inspection of his ministry. (PTI photo)

While several concerns regarding privacy have been raised in the past when it comes to the use and implementation of the UID or Aadhaar numbers, Sharma says the linking has helped bring down costs and has made the project scale-able. "It is a lightweight system that decouples authentication from recording," he says. Officials visiting other government offices for meetings can mark their attendance from there itself. "Later as we scale this up, employees will be able to do this from different cities too," says Sharma, adding that the department of personnel and training will now have to come up with policies to regulate this new system of recording attendance digitally.

The implementation of the biometric attendance system has had its share of detractors. In August this year in Asansol, trade unions had protested over the introduction of the biometric attendance system by Eastern Coalfields Limited (ECL). The same month, Delhi University teachers had also protested a similar move.