AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 10064 - Look into my eyes: Made-in-India Iris recognition on a new Samsung tablet

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, May 31, 2016

10064 - Look into my eyes: Made-in-India Iris recognition on a new Samsung tablet - Deccan Chronicle

Look into my eyes: Made-in-India Iris recognition on a new Samsung tablet

INDIATECHONLINE | ANAND PARTHASARATHY

Published

May 30, 2016, 12:40 am IST

Huge potential of Aadhaar prompts Samsung to ‘make in India’ for its tablet-based iris authentication technology.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Iris provides 8 GB storage and is expandable to 200 GB

Last week, Samsung, staged a dramatic demo in Delhi. As the Telecom Regulatory Authority's Chairman, R.S. Sharma and the Unique Identification Authority of India's Director General A.B.P. Pandey, watched, a Samsung engineer used a just-launched tablet PC to scan the iris of Aloknath De, Samsung's India R&D head. Dr De supplied his Aadhaar number. Within a second, the tablet reported that it had successfully established that he was who he claimed to be -- and brought up his Aadhaar card on the screen.

The resounding taalis aside, this was a development whose potential is only now sinking in. Samsung's Bangalore-based engineers have designed and developed what is arguably the first -ever tablet PC-based system to authenticate a person's identity with near infallibility. To do this the team led by Dr De has incorporated a special camera to scan the iris of a person's eyes and uses a formula called 2-factor authentication to identify him or her to 99.9 percent certainty ( see box: Iris scanning: Infallible)

The Samsung Galaxy Tab Iris, replaces the front camera with an Iris scanner. In other respects this is a fairly standard 7 inch tablet with a quad core processor, a 5 megapixel autofocus rear camera, with a good 3600mAh battery running Android Lollipop 5.11, with 1.5 GB RAM. What is unusual is the 8 GB storage, expandable to a massive 200 GB -- and one can see why. In authenticating identities, the tablet may have to store thousands of records.

In addition to the software to run the iris identity check with a single click, the makers have made the tablet fully compliant with the Aadhaar data base and has also been certified by the quality control organisation, STQC. They have placed the tablet's identity software development kit in the public domain so that developers can create applications where the iris scan can be used at ration shops, or for disbursing payments under MNREGA, pension payments and any number of e-citizen services.

If one wondered why Samsung chose India to create this technology, Dr Pandey suggested the logic. With Aadhaar enrolments crossing 1 billion, every seventh human being now holds an Aadhaar identity. Samsung is known to have filed for two patents in iris scanning and has registered two trademarks: 'Samsung Iris' and 'Samsung Eyeprint'. Don't be surprised if the company, besides leveraging the first mover advantage for this huge Indian business, also looks at the global potential of its Made in India technology.

So who is the immediate customer for the Galaxy Tab Iris? Don't all rush, because it is not for you and m -- yet. Public service departments who may want to authenticate beneficiaries with minimum delay are the obvious users. But there are other scenarios: rapid insurance claim settlements; preventing ghost mobile phone subscribers, quick clearance at airport immigration, preventing impersonation in examination halls, rapid opening of bank accounts at the customer's home.....you name it. At Rs 13,499, the tablet is reasonably priced for such a path breaking technology.

Iris scanners on devices like phones and laptops are not new. Microsoft launched two Lumia phones -- 950 and 950 XL -- last October with inbuilt iris scanners which helped owners unlock their phones using its Windows 'Hello' feature. But such applications are trivial compared to what was showcased last week -- and when it trickles down from being an enterprise tool to a consumer accessory -- that'll be the revolution. Consider, you could, from the comfort of your home, self-scan your iris -- and initiate a payment or a document like a passport without physical appearance. This is the ultimate selfie on steroids!

'Look into my eyes... and when you find me there, you'll search no more', sang Bryan Adams in another era on the sound track of the film 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves'. Some lyrics can be so prescient -- in ways their writers never imagined.

Iris Scanning: Infallible

The iris scanner is built around a digital camera that uses visible and Infra Red light. By shining IR into the eye, it renders the pupil very black, making it easy to isolate the iris. It then locates the centre and edge of the pupil, the edge of the iris and the eyelid and eyelashes.

Together these factors provide 200 points of reference against around 70 when you take a fingerprint. While fingerprints degrade especially when the subject does manual labour, eyes remain unchanged even after surgery. The blind too, have an iris. The chance of mistaking one person's iris for another's has been rated as one chance in 10 raised to the power 78 -- or virtually nil. Glasses or contact lenses won't affect the scan. (Source: How Stuff Works)