AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 7404 - Aadhaar works well where put in use

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, February 22, 2015

7404 - Aadhaar works well where put in use - Business Standard

Aadhaar works well where put in use

Surabhi Agarwal | New Delhi February 17, 2015 Last Updated at 00:26 IST

Clocking 317.8 million online real-time biometric authentications through 170 user agencies for a project that has been mired in uncertainty since its inception is no mean feat. But despite the handsome numbers and the generous praise by those who have deployed Aadhaar-based authentications, its use is restricted to a handful of states such as Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand. Government welfare programmes like pensions and job guarantee schemes have been linked to it, but only in small patches of the country.

Considered to be one of the prime uses of the unique identity number (UID) number in the long run, Aadhaar-based authentication matches biometrics such as fingerprints or iris scans of people with the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI)'s servers at the back end to check their veracity in real time. It has a response time ranging from one second to 20 seconds. However, rough estimates suggest that almost 75 per cent of all authentications so far are taking place in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana for disbursing payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and old age pension by India Post. While around 4 million pension payments are disbursed every month in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the number for MGNREGA stands at around 1.9 million.

The real-time biometric attendance system implemented by the central government is another large user of the platform on which 101,488 government officials mark their attendance twice a day. The state of Jharkhand, in fact, was the first to adopt the biometric attendance system that is accessed by 30,000 employees each day. There are also some pilots of public distribution system (PDS) disbursements in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Jharkhand along with some banks in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Chandigarh that are using it for disbursing banking correspondent payments.

Despite its existing users waxing eloquent about the benefits of Aadhaar authentication, a majority of the states are not employing it in a big way. After Aadhaar was notified as a proof of address and identity, most of the agencies are only using it in the physical format, where a photocopy or print out of the Aadhaar card has to be submitted, without biometrically authenticating it. However, this may be susceptible to fraud because a significant number of government certificates and attestations can be easily forged.

One of prime reasons for the hesitation of states could be the long spell of uncertainty shrouding the Aadhaar project. The Supreme Court's direction that the UID number should not be made mandatory for government services is adding to the uncertainty. Moreover, states that have been slow to adopt this service are also the ones with not a very high percentage of Aadhaar enrollments.

However, those who have used the technology swear by it. A Babu, collector of the Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh, who has spearheaded some of the initiatives in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, says there are several proposals in the pipeline to further escalate the use of Aadhaar in the state. The unique number can better target subsidies and weed out fakes and duplicates from the system, he says. For instance, vehicle and property owner databases are being seeded with Aadhaar, just like beneficiary lists of people living below the poverty line. "A simple query across the databases can rid the government of thousands of undeserving beneficiaries."

By March, the state's PDS platform will also be expanded to 6,000 fair price shops in Andhra Pradesh while voter lists of the entire state will be linked with Aadhaar numbers. Babu, who claims savings of anywhere between 10 and 25 per cent on projects linked to Aadhaar, says the technology tool is the "best gift to an administrator like me".

N N Sinha, principal secretary (information technology) of Jharkhand, adds the system is being expanded to cover PDS in all districts of the state and large sections of the MGNREGS along with old-age pension payments. There are huge savings derived from it, however connectivity is an issue. "Otherwise the system is very smooth and is hardly lethargic," adds Sinha.

The National Optical Fibre Network, which plans to connect each of the 250,000 gram panchayats in the country with broadband, could solve the connectivity issue.

The fact that since coming to power, the National Democratic Alliance government has been providing unprecedented support to the project will further prompt more states to come on board. Moreover, as the project nears its target of covering the entire country by March this year, the case for Aadhaar-based authentication is expected to become stronger. So far, over 758 million Aadhaar numbers have been generated. But for further growth to happen, the project will have to fight hard to keep another controversy to stop its march.