AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 8121 - Biometric watch before pay

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

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

8121 - Biometric watch before pay - Telegraph India

Biometric watch before pay

AMIT GUPTA

Ranchi, June 7: No attendance, no pay.

Jharkhand is moving towards a system where monthly salaries to its 300,000 government servants will be paid only after reviewing their biometric attendance and finding it satisfactory, a historic departure from the existing norm.

The Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance system, where employees press a fingerprint to a device to clock individual 'in-time' and 'out-time', makes it impossible for habitual latecomers or early-leavers to fudge the hours they clocked at work per day.

Rules framed by the state personnel, administrative reforms and rajbhasa department to make biometric attendance compulsory for all government employees will soon be tabled before the cabinet.

State IT secretary Sunil Kumar Burnwal, who video-conferenced with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) nodal officers and deputy commissioners on June 2 and 4 to push for biometric attendance at every government office, said: "Drawing and disbursement officials will release salaries only after getting biometric attendance records. That's our idea."

To make it happen, the IT department, custodians of Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance system that started in Jharkhand on January 1, 2014, is aggressively pushing to install biometric devices, right up to blocks, circle offices, schools, hospital, anganwadi kendras and others.

According to IT department sources, 1,150 biometric devices have been provided at the level of districts to install them at government offices.

"Around 80 per cent of biometric devices have been installed. We asked DCs to explain why 20 per cent biometric devices haven't been, and to do what's necessary to install and use them at the earliest," Burnwal said.

So far, records suggest that 45,371 government employees are registered users of biometric attendance system, with 26,361 marked as active users.

On June 5, records show over 13,800 employees marked their biometric attendance.

But, that's a fraction of the total government employee count. Jharkhand has on its rolls around 1.90 lakh regular employees and around one lakh contractual employees like parateachers (HRD) and sahiyas (health), among others, all of whom need to come under biometric attendance system.

In places where it is functional, a project officer, preferably a UIDAI staff working on behalf of IT department for biometric attendance, tables daily and weekly attendance summaries. He sends reports to IT department, which controls a central server at the data centre at the Dhurwa office of JAP-IT (Jharkhand Agency for Promotion of Information Technology) in the capital.

The state introduced biometric attendance from January 1, 2014, thanks to efforts made by senior IAS R.S. Sharma, former chief secretary of Jharkhand, now serving as Union IT secretary. Biometric attendance started at hi-profile offices such as state secretariats, divisional commissionary headquarters, offices of DCs, BDOs, which normally register most footfalls.

Initially, some senior IAS officers had objected to the idea of compulsory biometric attendance, saying often they worked up to 8-9pm, so coming in late by a few minutes should not matter or be recorded.

But Burnwal, countering the objections, said recording attendance would be good for workaholic IAS officers. "If you work till 10pm and it does not get recorded, the government does not know. So yes, the time you enter and the time you leave are both recorded and the government knows how many hours you have clocked on duty," he said.

Personnel department officials expect a sea change.

"Once the cabinet says yes, biometric attendance will be mandatory for all government employees," deputy secretary of personnel department P.K. Tiwary said.

Under-secretary in the personnel department Chandra Bhushan Prasad, who handles matters related to biometric attendance, said the state's real aim would be served once the system starts functioning in schools, health and anganwadi kendras, among others.

"So far, biometric attendance is limited to elite state, division and district headquarters. We need to reach out to offices in villages, blocks, circles and panchayats," Prasad said. "Biometric attendance, which works on Android, can change the way the government machinery functions."