AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 7794 - Majority Of U.S. Citizens Are Against Surveillance By Their Government, Shows Poll

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, April 17, 2015

7794 - Majority Of U.S. Citizens Are Against Surveillance By Their Government, Shows Poll - Counter Currents

Majority Of U.S. Citizens Are Against Surveillance By Their Government, Shows Poll

By Amnesty International USA

05 April, 2015
Amnesty International USA

The United States’ mass surveillance of internet and mobile phone use flies in the face of global public opinion, according to a new poll published in mid-March by Amnesty International. The majority of U.S. citizens, 63%, are against their government’s surveillance

The release marks the launch of a worldwide UnfollowMe campaign, a global initiative calling on the leaders of the U.S. and UK - as well as their close allies - to ban indiscriminate mass surveillance and intelligence sharing.

The poll, which questioned 15,000 people in 13 countries across every continent, found that 71% of respondents are strongly opposed to the U.S. monitoring their internet use. Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of the respondents said they wanted tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to block governments accessing their data.

The majority of U.S. citizens (63%) are against their government’s surveillance scheme compared to only 20% in favor.

“International public opinion clearly supports the scale back of mass surveillance,” said Steven W. Hawkins, Executive Director of Amnesty International

USA.

“If he wanted to, President Obama could halt surveillance programs that are jeopardizing the privacy of tens of millions of people around the world—he has the authority. He mandated limited protections for non-citizens more than a year ago, but they still haven’t come to fruition.

"Despite the President’s promises of reform, mass surveillance could prove to be a permanent scar on the USA’s human rights record, just like unlawful drone strikes and impunity for CIA torture."

In June 2013 whistle-blower Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency was authorized to monitor phone and internet use in 193 countries around the world, collecting 5 billion records of mobile phone location a day and 42 billion internet records – including email and browsing history – a month.

“We’ve got agencies looking through webcams into people’s bedrooms. And they’re collecting billions of cell phone location records a day,” whistle-blower Edward Snowden said on Amnesty International’s blog in March. “They know where you got on the bus, where you went to work, where you slept, and what other cell phones slept with you.”

KEY FINDINGS

The enemy within?

# In the U.S., less than a quarter of U.S. citizens approve of their government spying on them.

# Only 20% approve of technology companies giving the government access to data like emails, messages and social media activity.

# Among Americans aged 60 or above, the number drops even more -- only 13 percent approve of their government spying on them/nearly 75% disapprove.

# Half of U.S. citizens polled approve of spying on foreign national inside the United States.

# In contrast, when it came to people living around the world, support for surveillance drops 14 points, to 36% of U.S. citizens polled.

# Opposition to U.S. mass surveillance is strongest in Brazil, Germany.

# Strongest opposition to U.S. intercepting, storing and analyzing internet use came from Brazil (80% against) and Germany (81%).

# Key U.S. allies also oppose surveillance.

# The U.S. shares the fruit of its mass surveillance program with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom under the Five Eyes Alliance. Even in these countries, more than three times as many people oppose U.S. surveillance (70%) as support it (17%).

# Tech companies under pressure to help, not hinder, privacy rights.

# People also think tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook have a duty to secure their personal information from governments (60%) as opposed to providing the data to the authorities (26%).

Surveillance at home

In all 13 countries covered by the poll, people do not want their own government to intercept, store and analyze their phone and internet use. On average, more than twice as many people oppose surveillance by their government (59%) as those who approved (26%).

Most opposed to mass surveillance by their own government are people in Brazil (65%) and Germany (69%). Spain (67%), where reports that the NSA tapped 60 million Spanish phone calls were met with outrage in 2013, also topped the opposition table (67%).

NOTE [TO EDITORS]

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. YouGov conducted separate polls in 13 different countries. Total sample sizes in each country range from 1000 to 1847 respondents. Fieldwork was undertaken between 4 - 16 February. The surveys were carried out online. The figures in each of the 13 country surveys have been weighted and are representative of all adults (aged 18+) living in the relevant countries.

All multi-country averages have been calculated by Amnesty International.

On March 10, a lawsuit was filed in U.S. federal court, with Amnesty International USA as a plaintiff, challenging NSA mass surveillance.

On March 5, Amnesty International joined other human rights organizations in calling on the European Court of Human Rights to rule on the legality of mass surveillance being carried out by the UK’s intelligence agency GCHQ.]