Why this Blog ?
News articles in the Wide World of Web, quite often disappear with time, when they are relocated as archives with a different url. Archives in this blog serve as a library for those who are interested in doing Research on Aadhaar Related Topics. Articles are published with details of original publication date and the url.
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.
"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
The Department of Posts in the Nilgiris has suspended a woman employee on charges of dumping letters meant for distribution. The action was a consequence of undelivered Aadhaar cards and letters found dumped in a bin in O’Valley in Gudalur on Monday, said sources.
Eleven Aadhaar cards and 152 letters addressed to residents of areas coming under the Seemaandurai Post Office were found in the bin. This led to the residents staging a protest in front of the Post Office on Tuesday and the O’Valley Police and postal officials assuring them of stringent action.
The sources said that Postal Inspector Rohini conducted the inquiry and found the delivery person, Ajmal Parveen, guilty of dumping the letters that were supposed to be delivered.
ICDS officials with Sailaja and Varalakshmi at an old age home in Chittoor on Wednesday.– Photo: K. Umashanker
Two women who tried to starve themselves to death in their room at an ashram in Srikalahasti have been rescued and referred to psychological counselling by the district administration.
The case of the sisters, known as Praturi Sailaja (65) and Praturi Varalakshmi (54) as their Aadhaar cards suggest, has mystified the authorities of the Sri Sukhabrahma Ashram at Srikalahasti and the district administration.
While their place of origin is not definitively known – the Aadhaar cards given to them in Srikalahasti states their residential address as the ashram itself – inmates of the ashram say they seem to hail from Vijayawada.
The siblings came to the ashram 11 months ago and immersed themselves in devotional activities and hardly spoke to the fellow inmates. Gradually, they started confining themselves to their room, coming out rarely. Some of the swamijis at the ashram soon noticed that the two women were taking no food and were deliberately starving themselves to death, perhaps seeking ‘sajeeva samadhi’. On April 10, ashram inmates found that they had locked themselves in their room.
The door was broken open and the two women were found in an unconscious state, and emaciated.
Alarmed, the ashram authorities handed over the siblings to the Women and Child Welfare Department. Fellow inmates said they had learnt that the sisters were spinsters from an orthodox family. The duo was taken to an old age home in Chittoor and put on emergency medicare. For a few weeks, they behaved hysterically, throwing objects at other inmates and refusing to take food. Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Chittoor Project Officer Lakshmi brought the issue to the notice of Collector Siddarth Jain, who immediately referred them for psychiatric treatment. Under treatment, the siblings’ behaviour returned to normal, but they have remained inseparably attached to each other. The younger sibling Varalakshmi speaks rarely while to the old age home staff, but Sailaja never utters a word.
Going by the younger sister’s dialect and her repeated references to ‘Kanaka Durga’ and ‘Krishna river’, some officials think they probably hail from Vijayawada or its surroundings. The sisters are therefore referred to as “Vijayawada sisters” by fellow inmates.
Varalakshmi says their brother was a retired government employee living in Vijayawada, but cannot recall his name. The sisters were in possession of gold ornaments, Rs. 7,000 cash and some fixed deposit bonds with a bank at Moula Ali in Hyderabad. Though officials tried to trace their origins in Hyderabad, it did not give any results.
The younger sister’s dialect and her repeated references to ‘Kanaka Durga’ and ‘Krishna river’ point to their association with Vijayawada
GURGAON: The city's first National Digital Literacy Mission centre has been set up in DLF Phase II on Wednesday. The centre is expected to train over 1,500 under-privileged people in digital literacy this year.
The beneficiaries will be trained on all digital devices, specifically computers and mobile phones. Once trained, the beneficiaries will be able to send e-mails, connect on to social media, use e-commerce sites for online purchases, and will even know how to use the Internet to avail various government services such as registering for Aadhaar cards, ration cards and PAN cards.
Software provider Amdocs and Nasscom Foundation will bear the training cost, trainer's cost and other operational expenses at the centre.
Even though there will be dedicated trainers from NIIT Foundation, corporate professionals will volunteer and train people in digital literacy. "We will be glad to visit the centre whenever possible to provide training to people," said Preeti, an employee of Amdocs.
Deputy commissioner T L Satyaprakash, who inaugurated the centre, told TOI, "We will partner very actively with the corporate sector to make NDLM a reality. The government is in the process of making most of the services such as registering for Aadhaar cards, ration cards and PAN cards. However, we have been facing issues because not everybody is digitally literate."
"The initiative is an attempt to close the digital divide by helping individuals harness the power of computers and develop necessary skills to start using them with confidence," said Shrikant Sinha, CEO of NASSCOM Foundation.
By Aman Sharma, ET Bureau | 28 May, 2015, 05.34AM IST
Modi chaired his third interaction through PRAGATI — the ICT-based, multimodal platform for Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation — on Wednesday.
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked Defence Secretary G Mohan Kumar to make a presentation to him regarding the pension issues of ex-servicemen while the health ministry has been told to explore not insisting on a plethora of documents but rather use Aadhaar to reissue CGHS cards.
Modi chaired his third interaction through PRAGATI — the ICT-based, multimodal platform for Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation — on Wednesday, where he reviewed the implementation of key issues pertaining to ex-servicemen.
"Expressing serious concern at the perceived atmosphere of indifference with regard to issues pertaining to ex-servicemen such as delay in pension and retirement benefits, the prime minister directed the concerned authorities to pay more attention to their resolution at the earliest," an official statement from the Prime Minister's Office said. Sources told ET the PM said some "systematic changes" may be required with regard to welfare and problems of ex-servicemen and asked the defence secretary to give him a presentation on it soon.
The prime minister's intervention could be crucial as for the past several years the biggest grievance of exservicemen is the non-implementation of their demand for One Rank One Pension — that all officers and soldiers of equal seniority should be given the same pension, no matter when they retired.
The OROP issue is fast becoming a political hot potato for the BJP-led government that had promised its implementation during the election campaign but the issue has not been resolved. A major rally in planned in New Delhi next week by ex-servicemen organisations to protest nonimplementation of OROP. While Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar recently said the matter has been cleared and sent to the finance ministry, raising hopes of an announcement, but it now appears the finance ministry has again asked the defence ministry for some clarifications, in what could delay the matter even further.
At the PRAGATI meeting, the health ministry was told to explore not insisting on a host of address and identity documents afresh while re-issuing CGHS (Central Government Health Service) cards to government servants in Delhi. The health ministry is in the process of re-issuing lakhs of CGHS cards upon expiry of their validity and informed the PM that they would be re-issuing nearly three lakh CGHS cards in the next 45 days.
Sources told ET that the PM suggested that the ministry could rely on Aadhaar numbers to reissue CGHS cards since details of officials are mostly already seeded into the UIDAI platform. The ministry was asked to revert back to the PMO within 10 days on the prospect, sources said. "Reviewing the quality of service under CGHS, the PM gave clear directions to the departments concerned to resolve pending issues and grievances at the earliest," the PMO statement said.
The police resorted to mild lathi charge to disperse persons who blocked the main road at Kannivadi, condemning the “lethargy” of officials in linking Aadhaar details with voter identity cards, here on Wednesday.
The demonstrators alleged that the linking was not done for over 2,000 voters in Reddiyarchatram union.
Officials promised to take photos for Aadhaar card on May 25 but they advised the people to come the next day, they said.
On Tuesday, persons who came for taking photos to the centre at Kannivadi were asked to go home as they did not have sufficient forms to fill details, they alleged.
The agitators alleged that there was no response to repeated requests made to the Tahsildar and Collector in this regard.
The police assured them that they would make arrangement for taking photos on Wednesday. But they too did not make any arrangement.
Hence, the people blocked the main road.
To disperse the crowd, the police resorted to mild lathi charge and arrested seven CPI (M) members – K.S. Sakthivel, Raj Kumar, Chandru, S. Radhakrishnan, Murthy, Kumar and Suresh – and TMMK member Jaffar.
The district unit of CPI (M) condemned the lathi charge and demanded deployment of adequate staff for taking photos for Aadhaar card.
CPI (M) condemned the lathi charge
and demanded deployment of adequate staff for taking photos for Aadhaar card
Linking of Aadhaar with one’s Voter ID was publicised in the media as mandatory through the NERAP(National Electoral Rolls Purification & Authentication Program) and that failing to do so would result in deletion of names from the Voter list. Factly cuts through the confusion.
For the last few months, citizens have been receiving messages from various quarters about linking one’s Voter ID with their Aadhaar. The messages go to the extent of saying that not linking Aadhaar will result in deletion of their names from the electoral roll. But is this true? And can the Election Commission of India go against what the Supreme Court of India said about Aadhaar?
The Background
On 27th Feb 2015, The Election Commission of India (ECI) launched the NERPAP (National Electoral Rolls Purification & Authentication Program). This was done against the backdrop of duplicate names, multiple entries, repeating images and repeating Voter ID numbers etc. The procedure for deletion of multiple names & replacement is also not streamlined and not followed in all states. ECI also observed that the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) were not giving enough attention to these issues and are not disposing complaints in a given time frame. The ECI also mentioned cases where various courts expressed concern about such defective electoral rolls.
Against this background, the NERPAP was launched with the following major objectives,
Linking and Authentication of Voter ID (EPIC) data of voters with Aadhaar data of UIDAI.
Voluntary disclosure by voters about multiple entries concerning them and disposal of such cases within 15 days.
Correction of errors.
Improvement of Image Quality wherever requested.
Obtaining the feeding the mobile number and email address of the voter so that periodic information of revision, deletion, correction and other details can be sent to the voter.
A detailed methodology was suggested for feeding the Aadhaar number against the Voter ID. The process followed in Andhra Pradesh & Telangana earlier as a pilot was suggested to be followed by all the states. The Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) of various states were asked to do a set of preparatory activities including press conferences, meetings with district officials, formation of Booth Awareness groups, setting up of a state call center and proper training to officials.
The ECI also asked CEOs to give enough publicity to the Voluntary Disclosure of Multiple Entries campaign. It directed the CEOs to give advertisements in media, cinema halls highlighting that enrolling one’s name at more than one place is a punishable offence under Section 31 of the Representation of People’s Act.
The Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) of various states have been publicizing this on all platforms. Various media houses (print & electronic) gave ample publicity to this initiative. Though the CEOs did not say it is mandatory, media has been projecting this exercise as mandatory and that names would be deleted in case one does not link their Aadhaar with their Voter ID.
Is Linking Aadhaar Mandatory?
Time & Again, the Supreme Court has made it clear that Government cannot make Aadhaar mandatory for any scheme and issued a stern warning to the Government in March 2015. Surprisingly, the ECI’s letter launching the NERPAP does not talk about whether this is a mandatory or voluntary exercise. But this silence was perceived in the media and on various social media platforms as this exercise being mandatory. Many people who did not possess Aadhaar were forced to apply for one out of the fear of losing one’s voting rights.
After numerous complaints, the ECI clarified in a letter in April that this is only optional and non-furnishing of Aadhaar will not result in deletion of name. Adequate publicity was not given for this clarification and the campaign in various media platforms was still about this being a mandatory exercise.
After a lot of complaints started landing up at their door, the ECI finally had to issue a detailed clarification on 22ndMay, 2015 explaining that this exercise is not mandatory, but only optional.
This clarification cleared all confusion surrounding the issue and it unequivocally said that not linking Aadhaar with the Voter ID will not result in denial of any electoral service to the voter including deletion, fresh enrollment etc. It also said that the collection of Aadhaar is only for authentication and that Aadhaar will not be displayed or reflected anywhere in the electoral roll.
While this clarification directs the CEOs to give adequate publicity to these aspects, it remains to be seen if the Media takes it up in equal measure like they did with NERPAP campaign. But for now, spread the word and tell people that this exercise is not mandatory and nobody needs to worry about their name in the electoral roll.
Rakesh Dubbudu is with Factly.in. This article has been re-published with the permission of Factly. Visit the website here
Disclaimer : The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of Newslaundry.com. Newslaundry.com does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same. If the article carries photographs or images, we do not vouch for their authenticity.
Surveillance, censorship and data retention: are they having a ‘chilling effect’ on Australian life? In his Pen 2015 Free Voices lecture, delivered at the Sydney Writers’ Festival 2015, Richard Ackland takes the temperature of freedom
Technology, internet, communications.
‘The disproportionate overreach of the data retention regime goes beyond invasions of citizens’ personal privacy and information. It alters the relationship between the state and its citizens.’ Photograph: Getty Images
Tuesday 26 May 2015 02.13 BST Last modified on Tuesday 26 May 2015 02.15 BST
In the 1980s there existed in Sydney something called the Free Speech Committee. It was mainly comprised of hairy lefties who believed free speech should be absolute – even broader than the first amendment.
Soon strange old men with sweep-over hair dos began to appear at meetings of the FSC with leaflets about the virtues of “boy love”. The sweep-overs wanted to distribute them outside schools. The police had moved them on, saying this was inappropriate material. In short, their freedom of speech had been abridged.
Slowly it dawned on the FSC that freedom of speech had its limitations and that to protect the vulnerable, minorities or even society as a whole, restraints were necessary.
More recently, free speech has been adopted, not very successfully, by the rightwing of politics. They have failed to articulate a clear message about the topic and on the rare occasions when that happens it is soon contradicted.
Today Pen has asked me to deliver the free voices lecture, looking at how national security laws impact on journalists and writers and other freedom loving people. Hence the topic – “feeling the chill”.
I love the word “chill” in this context. The first time I heard it was its application in American First Amendment jurisprudence – specifically a case in the 1950s where the supreme court overturned a law requiring people who received “communist political propaganda” through the mail to sign for it and authorise receipt. It was held that that law had a “chilling effect” on freedom of speech.
Chilling effects take many and varied forms. Every two years the US-based Media Law Resource Centre holds a conference at Stationers Hall in London. This is the very place where copyright was invented and is the home of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, one of the livery companies of London.
It was founded in 1403 during the reign of Henry IV and the company held the monopoly over the entire publishing industry of the kingdom. Books that weren’t favoured by the Lord Chamberlain, or some other royal functionary, were burned in the courtyard under a tree.
Censorship, control of the written word by the state, has a long and venerable history and our most recent national security laws are a blip on a long highway that stretches back even before the invention of the printing press.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) director general of security Duncan Lewis, with members of the Australian Federal Police. Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) director general of security Duncan Lewis, with members of the Australian Federal Police. Photograph: Lukas Coch/EPA
Some here will know the dimensions of the recent commonwealth legislation, specifically the enhancement to Asio’s powers in last year’s National Security Act and the creation of something called special intelligence operations, that may not be reported on pain of imprisonment. Then there are the amendments to the telecommunications interception and access regime, providing for the mass collection of large amount of phone and internet data.
Each of those laws are a fundamental departure from the usual constraints attached to national security. In short order, here’s why.
The attorney general can designate some activity of Asio’s to be a “special intelligence operation”. No one is allowed to know what is a special intelligence operation. It may be that Asio’s HQ has been bugged by the Chinese; or surveillance of a Kings Cross brothel; or of a Muslim cleric; or that Asio has bungled something and put the entire nation at risk.
The designation of any operation of Asio, whether it be special or not, is entirely at the secretly-exercised discretion of the attorney general. It cannot be reported, not even if it is in the public interest to do so. The penalty is five years porridge or 10 years if lives might be endangered by the reporting.
The prosecutor, however, is required to apply a public interest test in deciding whether to proceed against a journalist, writer or publisher. Various factors are weighed. Has the journalist sought to confirm whether the story concerns a special security operation, is the story about significant wrongdoing by a commonwealth officer, and so on?
The answer to those inquiries will in every case be “no comment”. The prosecutor’s guidelines give no firm assurances one way or the other. All the Direct of Public Prosecutions says is that the matters that will be taken into account in deciding whether a prosecution is in the public interest will be decided on a case-by-case basis.
A joint submission to the national security legislation monitor from all the major media organisations says this is not good enough.
The uncertainty surrounding the application of the law would “expose journalists to an unacceptable level of risk and consequently have a chilling effect on the reportage of all intelligence and national security material”.
That sounds noble and free-speechy, but maybe we should also ask how often the media gets its hands on a blockbuster secret national security story that it should publish?
How frequently does that occur in a media crowded with news on crime, corruption, politics, sport, opinions, finance, floods, fires, plane crashes, the lotto results, and celebrity morsels?
Would anyone miss those stories, rather than news about Princess Kate’s new baby or Kim Kardashian’s bottom? There are plenty of pressing issues that can fill the space.
This is not to say that there isn’t a strong case that reporting on the conduct of national security agencies has a strong public interest component. The AFP, Asio, Austrac and a host of other organisations have been devouring a growing proportion of government spending and have enormous clout, with little public accountability.
It doesn’t mean every surveillance operation of homegrown terrorists has to be reported or should be reported. The difficulty is that in any attempt to hold agencies to account for their behaviour we don’t know if that impinges wholly or in part of a “special intelligence operation”.
The thing is that national security is frequently a fig leaf to hide all sorts of information that should be in the public domain – without threatening anyone’s security.
The government has asked the national security legislation monitor, Roger Gyles, to review this part of the legislation to find out how chilling it really is. The attorney general has insisted that it’s not at all chilling.
Some may remember his dizzying performance on Q&A in November where he said:
If it is a journalist covering what a whistleblower has disclosed, then the journalist wouldn’t fall within the reach of the section because the relevant conduct is the conduct constituting the disclosure, so if the event is already disclosed by someone else and a journalist merely reports that which has already been disclosed, as it was by [Edward] Snowden, then the provision would not be attracted.
Brandis has as strong a grasp of the meaning of his own legislation as he does of the meaning of metadata. The provision in the Act could not be clearer:
A person commits an offence if the person discloses information and the information relates to a special intelligence operation.
It doesn’t say it’s not an offence for a journalist if a whistleblower discloses it first. Brandis also told the National Press Club in October:
The idea that [special intelligence operations] could simply be rubber stamps to cover up or gloss over anything that Asio might choose to do is nonsense.
In reality it works like this. You don’t know what constitutes a special intelligence operation. If you ask you won’t be told – you have to guess whether information is criminalised. If it is, and you report it, the prosecutor has to weigh up whether a prosecution is in the public interest. If a case is commenced, then the journalist has no public interest defence, even if the story is in the public interest.
The dread section 35P is modelled on the controlled operations schemes in the Commonwealth Crimes Act, which makes it an offence to disclose information about controlled operations.
Controlled operations are about collecting information on criminal activity. Special Intelligence Operations presumably are about gathering intelligence about terrorism, which are also criminal offences.
So the question arises, do we actually need section 35P of the Asio Act? Probably not. The penalties are different, less if a non-endangering disclosure is made in a controlled operations case and the duration is less. SIOs last for 12 months, COs for three months.
Special intelligence operations are really a case of gilding the security lily. The lesson is not to accept at face value what government says when they seek to play down the reach and effect of a chilling new measure.
Australian attorney general George Brandis Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Australian attorney general George Brandis. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
When it comes to data retention there is even greater cause for scepticism. The government’s case is that securing the retention of private telecommunications data is nothing out of the ordinary, because security agencies and others already access this information.
All that the government is doing is mandating that the telcos retain the data for two years. What could be fairer than that?
If we start from the premise that whistleblowers in the government and corporate sectors are important to journalism, then the collection of information about journalists’ communications, definitely has a chilling effect on the ability to report. And this is quite apart from the privacy of every other citizen.
Certainly, if whistleblowers are not the primary source of information, a journalist nonetheless would be checking and verifying information with others. They too would be caught in the surveillance net.
The fear of being caught passing confidential public interest information would be enough to stymie much more of our news than we may expect.
More than 80 federal and state enforcement agencies accessed historic telecommunications data in 2012-2013, with over 330,000 formal requests for data, which resulted in a total of well over 500,000 disclosures by service providers.
And it does not include an undisclosed number of intelligence agencies, whose access details are classified.
New bodies are quietly being added to the list of organisations with self-authorising authority to access the data, which currently includes local councils, pasture protection boards, the RSPCA, and police of all stripes. The latest to join the list is the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, which has also been collecting data from the NSW Department of Transport’s Opal card users, as to where and when they might be travelling.
Scope creep, as it’s known, will continue pervasively. Any monitoring or regulatory obligations by the privacy commissioner or the ombudsman will be utterly swamped.
All of this happened with virtually no discussion about why two years was appropriate for a retention period, why the access is not limited to investigation of serious crimes, why there are no access warrants issued by judges, and why little thought has been applied to the protection from cyber-attack of this mass storage of personal information.
There are ways journalists might handle this. Encrypted communications, typewriters, meetings in garages rather than over the phone. Yet, the digital fingerprint is pervasive and eventually somewhere there’s likely to be a trace.
Journalists and media organisations were the only ones to jump up and down about the data retention legislation and, knowing which side its bread is buttered, the government amended the bill to create something called “journalist information warrants”.
It was designed to lock in Labor support and hasten the passage of the legislation. Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister, said that warrants will “gum up” the vital work of the security agencies and the police. He then set about creating a form of judicial warrant that won’t gum up anything.
Apart from journalists, every other access for data is free of the necessity to apply for a warrant and to have an independent mind applied to the importance of the request.
An agency wanting access to a journalist’s communications has to apply to an “issuing authority”, who is a judicial officer appointed by the minister. They could be judges, or lawyers, members of tribunals, close friends of the minister. They can also be terminated at the minister’s pleasure, so their independence is questionable.
The prime minister also chooses “public interest advocates” who make submissions about the journalist information warrants to the issuing authority. The authority has to weigh the public interest in protecting the identity of the source, against the public interest in the state knowing the identity of the journalist’s source.
Given that this is a nice nest of political insiders and mates doing the government’s bidding in the hunt for leakers, three guesses which public interest will win the day.
The journalist, of course, knows nothing about what is going on. If they did know they face two years in prison if they disclose any information about a warrant. And here a journalist is defined as a mainstream media creature, not a blogger or occasional specialist writer or commentator.
Talk about a chilling effect. This is an Arctic gale.
Journalist information warrants are not really warrants in the sense that an independent judicial officer examines a request for private information. In truth, if agencies of the state want to find out who is leaking their secrets they do not need to sniff around the backend of a journalist’s emails or phone records.
If something politically embarrassing was leaked, it is a relatively simple matter to know from which department the information came. It’s then a process of narrowing down the public servants who worked in the area and poking through their communications to discover the identity of the source.
Another line of attack is to go through the retained data of the lawyers who advise media organisations. No warrants required at all.
In Britain we had a good example of what can happen in the Plebgate case.
The Tory party whip, Andrew Mitchell, called police in Downing Street “plebs” when they asked him to take his bicycle through the pedestrian gate, not the main gate into the street. The Sun broke the story, which caused an enormous kerfuffle with Mitchell eventually resigning as whip.
In September 2014, it was revealed the police had obtained the political editor of the Sun’s mobile phone records without his knowledge. This was in breach of the usual safeguards for protection of journalists’ sources, but in the process they were able to discover the identity of the whistleblower.
What is staggering is that the nation didn’t rise up in mass protest at the mass collection and retention of personal information.
The former Australian independent national security legislation monitor, barrister Bret Walker, has said there should have been more community “push back” and that there’s not nearly enough rational talk about privacy.
There is no threshold to the information deemed necessary. It is not limited to instances of serious crime, but extends to shoplifting or putting firecrackers in someone’s letterbox. Nor is it just a data retention scheme – because the service providers are expected to create new data, specifically information about everyone’s location.
The justification advanced by the government is that new law was needed to patch holes in the business models of the telecommunications companies who were not retaining customer data for sufficiently long periods.
Telstra, Optus and Vodafone all have lengthy retention obligations in order to handle customer complaints and their own market analysis.
‘What is staggering is that the nation didn’t rise up in mass protest at the mass collection and retention of personal information.’ Facebook Twitter Pinterest
‘What is staggering is that the nation didn’t rise up in mass protest at the mass collection and retention of personal information.’ Photograph: Alamy
This is all being done in Australia while other parts of the world are dismantling data retention regimes. Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia and Germany have had their mass data retention schemes found to be unconstitutional. The Netherlands’ scheme was recently closed down as an invasion of privacy.
In the European Union, 11 countries have mandated a judicial oversight regime for access to retained data. In the US, Congress failed to pass legislation that would have put an end to mass surveillance of citizens, but a federal appeals court has ruled the surveillance unconstitutional. In any event, this part of the Patriot Act is due to lapse without extension on 31 May.
A recent examination of the legislation claims that the NSA’s mass data collection has not resulted in the thwarting of any significant act of terrorism.
The response to Edward Snowden’s revelations in England was for the security services to demand the Guardian hand over all the material. But as the newspaper could also publish the same material out of the US, which provided constitutional protections, there was the pointless and ridiculous exercise of smashing up computer hard drives in the basement of the newspaper’s HQ.
In April last year, the court of justice of the European Union declared the union’s data retention directive to be invalid, on two main grounds: serious interference with private life and that the directive was disproportionate to the aim of combating serious criminal activity.
All of which makes Australia seem a rather chilling backwater.
It is not as though the chilling effect and the state’s restraint of the media is a new development. It has had a long history, and to some extent the most recent measures are rather pale when you consider what official censors did in previous times of war.
In the first world war Australia’s censorship was outsourced to Britain. The censor’s office was administered by the Australian Army, with a deputy chief censor in Melbourne who answered to the chief censor in London. We had a War Precautions Act, which was modelled on Britain’s Defence of Realm Act.
In fact, Australian censors were more zealous. On occasion, material that arrived second-hand from Britain and had already passed British censors was disallowed here. A regulation gave the censor rights to search newspaper premises on the basis of suspicion of publication of injurious matter, and, if necessary, to destroy it.
By 1915 the Act was amended so that newspapers could not mention or illustrate that an item had been censored, and to allow the censor to require journals bound by an order to submit all material relating to the war.
Much of the media seemed happy to oblige because the major newspaper editors advised on censorship through something called the press censorship advisory board.
Political issues were also censored and managed, particularly under Billy Hughes, who specifically instructed the censors to prevent hostile references to himself, or material that would “prejudice the proposals of government”.
Hughes used censorship to stifle dissent over the conscription referendum. On 14 September 1916, the day after Hughes’ referendum bill was put before parliament the Sydney Morning Herald published an editorial in support of conscription, but critical of the over-zealous censorship of conscription-related reports. The editorial led to a major crisis between the paper and the government.
Most of these wartime powers lapsed after 1918, but the government expanded the Customs Act to ban communist and Sinn Fein publications deemed seditious. By 1929 over 240 works, including Marx’s Communist Manifesto, had been banned.
University of Canberra academics Peter Putnis and Kerry McCallum have done a lot of great work pulling together the history of wartime restrictions of the press.
In the second world war it was little different. Censorship was administered by the Department of Information, established in 1939 and managed under the National Security Regulations.
As in the first world war, censorship was managed by the deputy chief censor, reporting to the chief censor in London. Like its English counterpart, the department was also a propaganda agency, with reporters in the field. This duel role of censorship and propaganda often seemed quite dysfunctional.
In 1942 the Curtin government interned those responsible for the semi-fascist publication, The Publicist. And in April 1944 the Daily Telegraph published stories on coal strikes and thereafter was required to submit all stories to the censor before publication. It did this but published blank spaces where stories had been redacted. This was in defiance of a ban on identifying material that had been censored.
On the front line General Douglas MacArthur was particularly active in press management. That was something followed through in later wars with embedding journalists in the battle zone.
In the Falklands war, journalists travelled on Navy ships, however they had to agree to submit their material for censorship, and the removal of sensitive military material.
Also, embedded journalists relied on use of the Navy’s radios, or transport planes, to send copy back to England. Because of those arrangements the information journalists were filing was effectively controlled by the authorities.
During the Afghanistan war some journalists were embedded but if they weren’t they were often accompanied on trips by public liaison officers from the Defence Department.
We now have a war on terror that politicians tell us will go on indefinitely. That means reporting restrictions will be lasting longer than world wars one and two combined. Maybe even longer than the Hundred Years’ War between England and France.
Alan Rusbridger holds the remnants of a hard drive destroyed by British security agency GCHQ. Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Alan Rusbridger holds the remnants of a hard drive destroyed by British security agency GCHQ. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian
If journalists in Australia think the chill is too cold, maybe they should think about conditions in Bangladesh or Pakistan or even Russia where journalists are routinely killed in the line of their work.
In India and Turkey, strong nationalist movements mean the work of dissenting journalists is made very difficult. In India books are quite frequently withdrawn from sale because of law suits brought by upset groups.
Last year Penguin Books India withdrew a work called The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger. In the settlement, Penguin was required to affirm that “it respects all religions worldwide”.
Since December last year, 211 journalists have been imprisoned worldwide. There was an average rate of journalists’ deaths of 1.2 per week over the previous 12 months.
This has created a climate of fear and a lot of self-censorship. Pen America recently surveyed 800 writers worldwide for its Global Chilling Report. Among the key findings are that concern about surveillance is now almost as high among writers living in democracies (75%) as those living in non-democracies (80%).
The levels of self-censorship reported by writers living in democratic countries also approached the levels reported in authoritarian or semi-democratic countries. Here, it could also be argued that the media has chilled itself by ever more desperate attempts to dumb itself down.
Even in the quality media, we see attempts to make the news softer, more digestible, more stupid. The executive producer of SBS World News, Andrew Clark, recently advised his staff to avoid “turn off” stories about the Middle East, refugees, Indigenous Australians and Ebola.
He’s looking for “quirky” stories. He added: “Tonight it could be Katrina Yu’s rent-a-partner story or Naomi’s sex blackmail yarn.”
Focus groups revealed that older audiences wanted stories about fish oil, not news about the Ukraine. Quality newspapers are desperate to secure online readers, hence stories such as: “Stop! You’ve been peeling oranges all wrong.”
The words “breasts” and “penis” appear more frequently in headlines of what we once understood to be quality papers and news sites.
But back to where we started. The anti-terror laws and their chilling impact.
The provisions about special intelligence operations means that journalism can be criminalised without the journalist or the publisher knowing they are committing a criminal offence.
Of itself that would have a self-censoring chilling effect. The data retention laws do something else, even more serious.
The overreach of the data retention regime goes beyond invasions of citizens’ personal privacy and information. It alters the relationship between the state and its citizens.
Professor Roger Bradbury from the strategy and statecraft in cyberspace research program at the ANU’s National Security College has talked about this. The theory of the state is that it is there to protect citizens and apply taxation for the betterment of society. That requires a broad consensus.
But if the state undertakes mass surveillance of the citizens the connection between the governed and the government changes. We move from citizens of the state to subjects of the state. And that is a chilling evolution.
The problem could more properly be addressed by warrants given by judges, whether they gum things up or not, and properly funded review functions by the privacy commissioner and the ombudsman.
Too easily governments roll over and give security agencies what they want. You can predict what might be next – bulk retention of web browsing history.
Even without draconian laws, the self-censorship of many of the galley-slaves who toil in the bilges of the media is self-evident. Great blocks of commentary and news seem to fit into an ordained formula, pirouetting to the tune of an absentee landlord.
As AJ Liebling put it: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
This Pen 2015 Free Voices lecture was given by Richard Ackland at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on Sunday 24 May 2015. It is reprinted here in full with the permission of the author.
The state government of Maharashtra, India is set to implement the Aadhaar ID card biometric identification system at fair-price shops in an effort to prevent the bootlegging of goods, according to a report by The Asian Age.
The biometric identification plan will be rolled out across the state over the next six months, which is estimated to cost about Rs 200 crore (USD $31M) said Girish Bapat, minister for civil supplies, food and consumer affairs.
“We are strictly against black marketing and the outflow of food grain and kerosene,” said Bapat. “The Maharashtra government is spending Rs 11,000 crore (USD $1.71B) on distributing food grains and kerosene to below-poverty-line (BPL) people.”
Despite these efforts, food grain and kerosene valued at about Rs 2,500-3,000 crore (USD $390M – $46.8M) never physically make it to the people in need as a result of black marketers, said Bapat.
To combat at this, Bapat said the state government will introduce the Aadhaar-card-linked biometric identification system at fair-price shops.
Maharashtra has approximately 22.5 million yellow and saffron ration card holders, which are broken up three groups.
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Those families with a yearly income below Rs 15,000 (USD $234.00) are provided with yellow ration cards, which allow them to receive the maximum benefits under the public distribution system (PDS).
Families with an income above Rs 15,000 but below Rs 1 lakh (USD $1,560.00) are provided with saffron ration cards, entitling them to the second level of benefits.
Finally, those families with income above Rs 1 lakh per annum are provided with white ration cards. These card holders are not eligible for subsidized items and the card is mostly used as an identification document.
Wednesday, 27 May 2015 - 1:25pm IST | Place: Hyderabad | Agency: ANI
He also urged state government officials to prepare an action plan for e-governance by June
File Photo
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has launched a web portal that will enable people of the state to register their grievances, give suggestions and post photographs and documents pertaining to their complaints.
Speaking on the occasion, he urged state government officials to prepare an action plan for e-governance by June.
The 'Meekosam' Portal allows people to register their grievances using an Aadhaar number. People can also track the progress of the work being done to resolve their complaints with the help of their Aadhaar numbers.
The acknowledgement of a submission of a complaint can be received via SMS and e-mail.
The submitted grievances would be forwarded to the concerned departments and if the complaint is not resolved within a stipulated time-frame, it would automatically be forwarded to the higher authorities for necessary action.
CBSE is likely to start issuing mark sheets and certificates in digital format as well along with hard copies which can be stored by students in their digital lockers, according to a top official in the IT Ministry.
NEW DELHI: The Central Board of Secondary Education is likely to start issuing mark sheets and certificates in digital format as well along with hard copies which can be stored by students in their digital lockers, according to a top official in the IT Ministry.
"We are working with CBSE on digital certificates. The proposal is to enable students to store their CBSE certificates in their digital locker. I expect CBSE will issue these certificates within couple of months," IT Secretary R S Sharma told PTI.
The government launched digital lockers on February 10 and within three months over 1 lakh people have started using it. Madhya Pradesh (over 24,000), Uttar Pradesh (over 17,000) and Gujarat (over 13,000) are top three states where people have registered for this facility.
The concept of digital locker is to make people free from carrying files or getting copies attested.
Any person having Aadhaar number can open digital locker account for free.
"When a government department is issuing a certificate then other government department should not make people run for verifying same document again and again. Our priority is to bring all educational institutes on board for issuing certificates that can be stored in digital locker," Sharma said.
He added, the Department of Electronics and IT is also working with various other entities to issue digital certificates.
"Along with academic certificates we are approaching other government departments that are involved in issuing any kind of certificates. PAN Card, Voter ID are also in pipeline," he said.
IT Ministry will soon start working with Oil PSUs to issue digital LPG books and with state governments for ration cards and state education board certificates.
"This all will be linked to Aadhaar number of people. People can choose documents which they want to share with someone. It can be shared by e-mail by just clicking on the share option button. Department are also making changes in their system to start accepting documents online," Sharma said.
For the first time in the country, children below five years would get their Aadhaar card, registered and delivered at home. The Krishna district administration had taken up the pilot project to be implemented in Avanigadda mandal of the district.
The officials from all departments would make a door to door visit in the mandal and collect the data of all the children below five years of age. Later, the Aadhaar enrollment team would visit these houses and feed the data to generate Aadhaar card.
They staff would also feed the biometric and iris in the computer for the Aadhaar card. The officials expect that there are about 2,500 children below five years of age in the mandal who would be given Aadhaar cards for the first time through the pilot project.
District collector Babu Ahmad asked the officials of revenue department to coordinate with medical, panchayat raj and other departments to ensure that the pilot project is implemented successfully. The children would get UID number and Aadhaar card that would help them get the benefits of the State and the Central government schemes.
NOIDA: A 15-day drive for Aadhaar card registration was launched here on Monday.
The inauguration was done by DM Nagendra Pratap Singh while block development officers have been deployed in booths across Noida for this.
In the next phase, Singh plans to link Aadhaar and voter ID cards, as decided in a meeting with RWA body and other social organizations at the Indira Gandhi Kala Kendra on Sunday.
Stressing the importance of Aadhaar cards for proper verification, Singh said that there were 5,28,000 voters in Noida, but only 12,000 have Aadhaar cards. "This drive is being held with the hope that once the Aadhaar card is linked to the voter ID card, then a person can vote without problems of inadequate data and duplicity," said Singh.
During the course of the drive, individual BLOs will sit in 330 booths across the city and complete the process of Aadhaar card registration with the help of sector RWAs and social NGOs.
For this, each BLO has been given an identity card by the additional district magistrates or sub-divisional magistrates so that their authenticity is verified.
Special camp for registering biometric data for Aadhaar card for the residents of 36 coastal villages in the district will be held as per the following schedule:
Vaimedu west village (May 27 to 29) and Vettangudi village in Sirkali taluk (May 27 to June 1).
Similar camps will be held at the following panchayat offices on the dates specified: Magadhanam (May 27), Vadugachery (May 28), Chembianmahadevi (May 29), Agalankan (May 30), Uthamacholapuram (May 31), and Gopurajapuram (June 1).
In Tranquebar taluk, the camp will be held for two days from May 27 in Arupathi village panchayat office and for three days from May 29 at Sembanarkovil village panchayat.
In a press release issued here on Monday, S.Palanisamy, District Collector, has appealed to the members of the public to utilise the opportunity to register their biometric data for issuing the Aadhaar cards.
State to implement Aadhaar card-linked biometric system
Kolhapur, May 26: Maharashtra government will soon implement the Aadhaar card-linked biometric system in fair price shops to curb black marketing, a state minister said today.
"We are strictly against black marketing and outflow of food grain and kerosene. Maharashtra government is spending Rs 11,000 crore on distributing food grains and kerosene to below poverty line (BPL) people," state Food and Civil Supplies Minister Girish Bapat said in a press conference.
However, food grain and kerosene worth approximately Rs 2,500-3,000 crore do not reach the beneficiaries and vanish from the market, he said.
Therefore, to cut out the fraud, the government will introduce of Aadhaar card linked biometric procedure in fare price shops as well," he added.
Bapat arrived in Kolhapur to attend the BJP executive meeting scheduled tomorrow.
- See more at: http://www.igovernment.in/news/1003613/biometric-system-in-fair-price-shops-in-maha-soon#sthash.9kRdrN55.dpuf
It is safe to say India has got its act on curbing black money in reverse gear. In most western economies, the problem hardly exists: the tough financial reporting standards in place for banks and individuals ensure harsh laws to check illicit flows are rarely used.
India has some tough laws, including the ones passed recently, but illicit financial flows out of the country are rampant. As India creates databases that link tax records, Aadhaar numbers and bank transactions, the space for generating illicit funds—basically money that’s not in the tax net—will narrow.
On Monday, finance minister Arun Jaitley urged tax officers to squeeze the parallel economy gently. Perhaps he is concerned about the negative labelling such action may provoke. He should not worry on that count. There is a world of difference between levying extortionate tax demands on big companies and legitimately demanding taxes due to the government.
IriTech’s plan is to start marketing the upgraded system in India, where the company already has a strong presence via contracts with government agencies
IriTech has announced a new, enterprise version of its biometric time and attendance tracking system. Called Time & Attendance Enterprise, it’s an update to the company’s IriShield iris-scanning system.
The company is aiming its updated system at medium- and large-sized organizations, where its compatibility with large-scale databases and its back-end matching software could be put to particularly effective use. IriTech is also emphasizing the cost-effectiveness of this solution, given that only once licence needs to be purchased for each company deploying it, and there are no extra costs for checking employees in and out using the system.
IriTech’s plan is to start marketing the upgraded system in India, where the company already has a strong presence via contracts with government agencies. Those have largely been the product of the country’s ambitious Aadhaar project, a national biometric identification initiative with many facets; and IriTech expects it to keep growing, with further opportunities to come.
In related news, the company also recently debuted a new system that employs both iris and face recognition.
Indira Gandhi Municipal Corporation Stadium will be the venue for Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s Nava Nirmana Deeksha, which is scheduled to commence from June 2. Krishna Collector Babu A on Monday said that the Chief Minister would be addressing the people from 9.30 a.m to 10 a.m.
Under the ‘Capital in Fusion’ initiative, the government would distribute Rs.3.000 to each member of women self help groups from June 3 to 7. As many as 5.8 lakh SHG members would be distributed Rs.175 crore.
He further announced that the district administration was planning to launch a special pilot project in Avanigadda mandal to enrol Aadhaar details of children aged below five years. A special team will be visiting the houses and collecting the details for Aadhaar enrolment at the doorsteps. The team would be collecting the biometric, IRIS and photos of the children, said a press release
According to a labour ministry official, through the registration and issuance of U-WIN cards, the government also intends to create a Central-level database of all unorganised sector workers in the country.
With the possibility of a nationwide stir by trade unions looming large, the NDA government plans to announce the roll-out of a new overarching social security scheme for the country’s unorganised workers. This, the government hopes, will blunt the anti-labour charge levelled against it by both workers groups and opposition parties.
Unorganised sector workers, who account for an estimated 82.7 per cent of the country’s total labour force, have largely been out of the ambit of labour regulations and most social schemes.
Under the new scheme, they are expected to get multiple facilities through new smart cards called U-WIN, or the unorganised workers’ identification number.
The cards will be marketed as a starting point for the formulation of schemes to provide life and disability cover — including health and maternity benefits as well as old-age protection — for unorganised sector workers. This has been a key demand of 12 Central trade unions for a while now.
The strike called by trade unions on Tuesday is meant to register their protest against the changes proposed by the Centre in the Industrial Disputes Act and other labour regulations, the Centre’s disinvestment policy and the recent proposal to allow investment of Employees Provident Funds Organisation (EPFO) money into equities.
According to a labour ministry official, through the registration and issuance of U-WIN cards, the government also intends to create a Central-level database of all unorganised sector workers in the country. Details of these workers are generally sketchy, which makes enrolling them for schemes difficult.
As it stands, the cards will be issued by the district administration of each state, which have been asked to prepare a roll-out plan. Officials said the project is proposed to be funded largely by the Centre and will subsequently be linked to Aadhaar and bank accounts of these workers.
Officials said the new cards will ensure that all unorganised workers get social security scheme benefits covered under the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008. “We hope to provide primary, preventive and even secondary health services to unorganised workers, besides life insurance and pension, through this single card,” an official said.
To register, a person must be at least 14 years of age and must issue a self-declaration that he or she is an unorganised worker.
“This card, when linked with the Aadhaar number and bank account number, will provide a platform for various social security schemes implemented by ministries and departments. Given its outreach and volume, it would be a major step towards bringing social security schemes for unorganised workers under one umbrella,” the official said.
The card, launched on December 25, 2014 in Gujarat on a pilot basis, will eventually replace the earlier smart card issued under the Rashtriya Swastha Bima Yojana.
As per latest data from the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), the country’s labour force comprises at estimated 48.37 crore people, out of which 47.28 crore people are said to be employed. The unorganised labour, according to NSSO estimates, accounts for 82.7 per cent of the total labour force, including a significant share of workers engaged in low income generating activities.
To issue the cards, the labour ministry has evolved a system for coordination with the state labour department, officials said. They added that based on consultations with the state labour secretaries, detailed guidelines for registration of unorganised workers have been prepared and circulated to them.
As migrant workers occupy a major chunk of these unorganised workers, to check the possibility of duplication in registration of these workers, the U-WIN card will be authenticated by Aadhaar and a biometric de-duplication software in-built in the UIDAI database, officials said
DDC informed that the district administration has worked out a detailed strategy of deploying Enrolment teams to achieve 100% enrollment under Aadhaar.
GK News Network
Reasi, Publish Date: May 26 2015 12:33AM | Updated Date: May 26 2015 12:33AM
File Photo
To achieve 100 per cent coverage under UIDAI’s Aadhaar scheme, Reasi District Administration has constituted teams headed by Sub Divisional Magistrates and Teshildars which will enroll people in each panchayat of the district this was informed by Deputy Commissioner Reasi Sushma Chauhan today
She said that people who have missed the Aadhaar drive have a golden chance to get enrolled through these teams and also those who are still waiting for their cards can get a copy of Aadhaar from these teams. Chauhan further informed that one Mobile Aadhaar Enrolment unit would be present for three days in each panchayat. The drive has been launched in Mahore area and would be rolled out in other parts of the district in a phased manner.
DDC informed that the district administration has worked out a detailed strategy of deploying Enrolment teams to achieve 100% enrollment under Aadhaar.
She said that these teams would follow a panchayat-wise route plan and would provide services to every panchayat for a minimum period of three days.
People who have not received their Aadhaar numbers can also contact these roaming enrolment centres and collect their e-aadhaar and any person whose Aadhaar enrolment has been rejected could also re-enroll through these centres, added Chauhan.
CHENNAI: The Chief Electoral Officer Sandeep Saxena on Monday said that under the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP), collection of Aadhaar details from voters had been completed fully in 30 districts, except in Chennai and Kancheepuram.
Out of the 5.62 crore electors in Tamil Nadu, till May 24 the data of 5.54 crore voters (98.72 per cent) had been collected and the data entry of 4.97 crore electors (88.48 per cent) had been completed.
In Kancheepuram district, details from 98.7 per cent of voters had been collected while in Chennai, it was expected to be completed soon. Districts were now ready to start seeding Aadhaar details into Electoral Rolls. In Namakkal district, all work relating to the NERPAP had been completed.
Entering the information received from the voters into the database had been going on in full swing and the seeding of Aadhar details with EPIC details was expected to be completed in two to three weeks, the CEO said.
The seeding would be monitored at three levels. In the first level, Booth Level Officers and Supervisors would verify the details of Aadhar card and EPIC.
At the second level, Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) would check four per cent of the details randomly to ensure that the seeding was perfect.
At the third level, Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) would verify two per cent of the details randomly.
Meanwhile, the poll department sources said the officials involved in all levels had worked hard to reach the target in time and the office of the CEO had written to the Election Commission to ‘appreciate their services suitably’. From Booth Level Officer to District Electoral Officer who had done excellent work in this regard would be honoured in due course.
The NERPAP was launched on March 3 and the programme was being implemented successfully in Tamil Nadu.
The major objectives of NERPAP includes linking and authentication of Electoral Roll data of electors with Aadhaar data, obtaining the mobile and email address of the electors and feeding in the Electoral Rolls database so that periodic information of poll day, revision schedule, deletion/correction notice etc. and other facilitation services can be provided to the electors. For this purpose, the BLOs made house-to-house visits and obtained details from electors.
The CEO said four special camps were also conducted for this to enable electors to file their claims, if required, on form 6,7,8 and 8A. So far, 13 lakhs claims and objections had been received which were being disposed.
... But it’s not mandatory
■ Chennai: Chief Electoral Officer Sandeep Saxena on Monday clarified that the furnishing of Aadhaar number for the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP) is not mandatory
■ In an official release, the CEO said the Election Commission had clearly said that no electoral service would be denied to any elector on the ground of non-furnishing of Aadhaar number
■ Further, the CEO said the Aadhaar number of an elector would not be displayed/reflected in electoral roll or Electors Photo Identity Card or voter slips or shown in digitized form on website for public scrutiny or in any other document of the Election Commission of India shareable with public or put in public domain
The income tax department seems to be finding ways to expedite the process of linking permanent account number (PAN) with the unique identity number Aadhaar, a step that could eliminate duplicate PANs and assist the government in taking action against those evading tax.
To achieve this, the Income Tax Dax department is looking at introducing online Aadhaar number authentication facility while allotting PAN, two tax department officials close to the development told Livemint.
"We have successfully undertaken a 360-degree profiling of taxpayers where with the help of a PAN we are monitoring all transactions linked with the PAN. Cross-seeding with Aadhaar will ensure that only genuine PANs remain in the system," said an official.
Besides, the department has included a separate column in the PAN application form for taxpayers to mention their Aadhaar number although it is not mandatory.
The I-T department had also asked the Aadhaar number of taxpayers in the recent income tax return form. However, the new form is being reworked by the department following complaints made by some taxpayers over strict rules asking to reveal their all bank accounts and foreign trips in a particular year.
However, the requirement to disclose Aadhaar number is likely to be kept unchanged, said an official.
As per the finance ministry's annual report for FY15, the tax department had linked 4.63 million Aadhaar numbers with PAN database.
The income tax department has been relying on technology to guarantee that duplicate PANs are not issued. However, a few taxpayers were able to get more than one PAN by altering their personal information in the PAN application form.
To contain these mal-practices, the I-T department had opted to issue a biometric PAN. However, the move was halted by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to prevent duplication of its efforts, as it captures biometric information though an iris scan and fingerprint.
"Since Aadhaar uses fingerprints and iris scans, its cross-tabbing with PAN should help weed out duplicate PANs and help the tax department in its anti-tax evasion drive," he said.
"At present, identity theft is a real problem in India. There is no effective measure to even monitor PANs of those who have died," he added.
