AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 11704 - IIT grad hacked Aadhaar data through Digital India app: cops

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

Friday, August 4, 2017

11704 - IIT grad hacked Aadhaar data through Digital India app: cops - Indian Express

IIT grad hacked Aadhaar data through Digital India app: cops

The complaint to the police stated said that Srivastava had accessed UIDAI data without authorisation between January 1 and July 26 for an app called ‘eKYC Verification’.

Written by Johnson TA | Bengaluru | Updated: August 4, 2017 2:38 am

The complaint to the police stated said that Srivastava had accessed UIDAI data without authorisation between January 1 and July 26 for an app called ‘eKYC Verification’. The app delivered demographic data like name, address, phone number of individuals from the central identities data depository of Aadhaar to authenticate unique identity numbers. It was placed on Google Play Store with the claim that it was developed by an entity called myGov linked to the start-up Qarth Technologies, which had been acquired by the taxi hailing service Ola in 2016. An IIT Kharagpur graduate who has been accused of hacking into the central identities data repository of the Unique Identification Development Authority of India’s (UIDAI) Aadhaar project gained access to the repository through the Digital India e-hospital initiative of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, police investigation has revealed. Bengaluru Police on Thursday formally announced the arrest of Abhinav Srivastava — a 31-year-old hailing from Uttar Pradesh — in connection with a complaint of unauthorised access of the central identities data repository filed by the UIDAI on July 26.

Investigations by the police cyber crime unit since the detention of the software engineer revealed that Srivastava hacked into the Aadhaar-enabled e-hospital system created under the Digital India project of the Government of India to access the central identities data repository of UIDAI for verification of Aadhaar numbers for his ‘eKYC Verification’ app.

“As a highly qualified technical expert, Srivastava had a deep interest in developing Android mobile apps. He developed the Aadhaar e-KYC verification mobile application in January 2017 and earned about Rs 40,000 from advertisements,’’ Bengaluru Police Commissioner T Suneel Kumar said on Wednesday. “The accused accessed UIDAI data through the e-hospital application and its server. He provided Aadhaar information to people through the app.’’

“He managed to hack into the server of the e-hospital system and, using this system, he used to send verification requests to the UIDAI database for his own app. The UIDAI system allowed access under the impression that the authentication requests were coming from the e-hospital system and it was not apparent that the query was unauthorised,’’ a police source said.

At the time of his arrest, Srivastava was employed with Ola after the start-up Qarth Technologies he created, with a IIT Kharagpur batchmate Prerit Srivastava, was acquired by Ola in March 2016 in order to take over an e-wallet app called X-pay developed by the start-up. Srivastava was earning Rs 40 lakh a year at Ola, Kumar said. The source said, “He has developed as many as five mobile apps. We are investigating if the eKYC Verification app he developed was used in any form by Ola. The app was used by around 50,000 people after it was placed on Google Play Store.”

Police sources said they were also probing if Srivastava had been aided by anyone in hacking into the e-hospital system. The e-hospital system was created by the government to allow people to make electronic appointments in government hospitals. It has been used in three hospitals in New Delhi — AIIMS, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital and Safdarjung Hospital.

The e-hospital app, which is hosted on the cloud services of NIC, facilitates online appointments at hospitals “using eKYC data of Aadhaar number, the if patient’s mobile number is registered with UIDAI. In case the mobile number is not registered, it uses the patient’s name”. Srivastava’s eKYC Verification app mimicked the e-hospital app in accessing the identity authentication services of UIDAI.