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

Saturday, February 13, 2016

9351 - We are creating a modern computing language - TNN


Anand J | TNN | Feb 12, 2016, 05.05 PM IST

The youngest founder at Julia Computing is just 21. He is still in college, contributing to the Bengaluru-based company's open source programming language during his spare time. 

That's Keno Fischer. The German citizen is doing his masters in Physics from Harvard University. He was a prolific contributor to the language for three years preceding his status as co-founder of Julia Computing. 

"We are a meritocratic company. Our oldest member is 52 (Alan Edelman, a professor of applied mathematics and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Our biggest contributor now is a higher secondary student," says founding partner of Julia Computing, Viral B Shah. 

The other founders are Stefan Karpinski, Jeff Bezanson, Edelman, and Deepak Vinchhi, who work across various locations in Cambridge (MIT, Boston, US), California and Bengaluru. Shah is the common connection. The six founders met for the first time last year at the annual JuliaCon event held at MIT. 

Shah started it as a side project in 2009. Since then, the language has become very popular. It got a huge boost when a blog post uploaded on their website on February 14, 2012, went viral. Today, the number of contributors to the language stands at 500. And the language is being used by 150,000 programmers. 

The software is given free while the company makes money from services and consultancy. "You need a new modern day language to process the huge data that is aggregated as part of internet-of-things and the cloud," says Shah.

Several Fortune 500 companies, as also the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the New York Fed, and Blackrock Capital are among the many that have used the language. It is being used across sectors — financial services, 3D printing, semiconductors. It has entered the classrooms of several computer science colleges around the world. 

"We incorporated the venture in December 2013 when a New York-based hedge fund approached us to support them in the use of the language," says Shah, who holds a doctorate in computer science from University of California. After college, Shah worked as a senior scientist at Interactive Supercomputing, a company that was acquired by Microsoft. The latter killed the intellectual property that Shah had created at Interactive Supercomputing. That pushed Shah to focus on open source.

"With open source, you can keep on building and expanding the horizon of what the software can do," says Shah, pointing out that even Microsoft programs are now being open sourced. Shah has also co-created Circuitscape, a free, open-source program which helps to predict patterns of movement, gene flow, and genetic differentiation among plant and animal populations in heterogeneous landscapes. It was used to map India's tiger population.

The Mumbai-born, 36-year old Shah says he has not made much money, despite his qualifications. But he also adds that since he was from an upper middle class family, there wasn't too much pressure and he had the freedom to experiment. He worked for three years on a meagre salary with the Aadhaar programme, attracted by its potential to bring financial inclusion. "By late 2012, Aadhaar was on autopilot. So I took up Julia full time," he says.