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

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

8928 - Mobile as the digital identity for India - Economic Times

Gautam Hazari
GSMA, Technical Director


Mobile as the digital identity for India
13 Oct 2015

Without giving it much thought – we have increasingly started to live double lives. There is our physical, everyday “organic” life and then there is our “digital” life. Slowly or maybe not that slowly, the boundary between the two has started to become more and more blurred. This brings on a very exciting new world and at the same time some interesting challenges, the most important and interesting one is about the “identity” and everything around it, including “proving” the identity. Questions like “How do I know you are who you say you are?” no longer becomes absurd and starts to be in the mainstream.
Source: Peter Steiner's cartoon, as published in The New Yorker

In the physical “organic” life, we consciously or subconsciously use psychological mechanisms to “create a proof in our mind” that the “identity” is correct, based on personal story, contextual experiences referred as the “past personal narrative”. So we know the person is Sunil, based on our past experience with the individual, our personal memory of the associated facial recognition, voice, behavior and so on. The “proving” of the identity is “authentication”. In the “digital” life – it’s not based on “past personal narrative”, but with the little box that asks us to “prove” we “know something” …………


Looks familiar, right ? This little text box has survived over 5 decades!! Passwords were first used in 1961 in MIT, in a time sharing system CTSS (Compatible Time Sharing System). The purpose of the “Password” was to test “Is it really you?” and surprisingly, it is still used for the same purpose, even after more than 5 decades. This is absolutely amazing, as we hear regular stories about the high profile security breaches involving passwords, still that little text box has survived so long !! As per the Verizon’s 2014 Data Breach Investigations Report, 2 out of every 3 data breaches involve passwords. The problem has been amplified with the massive proportion of our lives involved in the “digital” world. A survey published by Password Boss in July 2015 suggests that 59% percent of users reuse their passwords and the reason being “its too hard to remember them”. This is not surprising, as this is basic human psychology – we normal humans generally can only remember limited number of different combinations.

Here is an interesting report from Splashdata, published in January 2015, which lists the most popular passwords for 2014.


What does that mean – the compromise of the passwords at the weakest link in our “digital” life impacts the strongest and most secure sites as well, as we start to reuse our passwords between the sites [If my banking site password is reused at my grocery store site, then a compromise at the grocery store site impacts directly the banking site – as I am reusing the password at these sites].


The GSMA Consumer Research 2015 found out that 68% of consumers say that forgetting passwords is a significant problem, which then leads to reusing. Given a choice between security and convenience – users tend to lean towards convenience in this case, and balancing the two is critical for our “digital” lives. This is extremely important for India, as there are 350 million Internet users in India, which is growing at a staggering rate and predicted to reach 503 million by 2017.
So where is the problem? The problem is much more fundamental and not just about security implementation, as otherwise the “password” would not have survived that long.
The problem is not about “security” – it’s about the “identity”. We almost forget that there is a service that we use several times a day, a service that is omnipresent, a service that we almost cannot live without and something that is always with us – and still, we do not need to use password to prove our identity – it’s the Mobile Phone. That does not mean that its not secure – on the contrary its extremely secure, hardened by the Mobile Network Security mechanisms, business processes and fraud prevention mechanisms. Mobile Services are an excellent example of balancing “convenience” and “security”. 

The question then comes to mind – “Hey, why don’t we use this to solve the Password problem?” That’s exactly what “Mobile Connect” is, a global mobile industry solution that provides “conveniently secure and a private” way to replace passwords, utilising the mobile device and the mobile network assets. For India, it is even more critical, as 50% of the Internet users in India use it only from mobile.

So, what exactly is Mobile Connect? Mobile Connect is a simple, secure and convenient authentication mechanism in our “digital” lives, which uses the mobile device as the “authentication device”. It uses the inherent security associated with the possession of the mobile device, which proves “Something I Have” along with adding additional security with “Personal PIN” to prove “Something I Know”.



Here is a journey of Sunil in his “digital” life - Sunil wants to access his online banking site, he needs to prove his digital identity, i.e. he needs to be authenticated. The banking site offers Sunil to use Mobile Connect for authentication. Sunil clicks on the Mobile Connect button, he is been asked to enter his mobile phone number. He gets a prompt at his mobile device to enter his “Personal PIN”. He is authenticated and starts to use his online banking service – No passwords to use. The same “Personal PIN” is used by Sunil when he needs to buy a gift from the online shop, again no passwords to use.



The Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India has published the “Guidelines on Mobile as Digital Identity” in July 2015, which suggests the same. It even suggests the linkage of the Aadhaar numbers with Mobile ID.
Linking the Mobile Connect account of the user with the Aadhaar creates a “Conveniently Secure” link between the user and the Aadhaar number, using the Mobile Device, so that Authenticating using Mobile Connect links the user’s Aadhaar number, without the user needing to remember or proving that the user has the possession of the Aadhaar number.
This opens up massive opportunities for India, lowering the barriers for proving identities in our “Digital” lives in a convenient and secure way, so that we can all live a “Happy Digital Life” in India.




DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETTelecom.com do not necessarily subscribe to it. ETTelecom.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organisation directly or indirectly.
About Gautam Hazari

Gautam Hazari is the technical Director for the Personal Data program at GSMA. He works with the mobile operators around the world on mobile identity and also with the extended industry on the identity ecosystem.
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