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, September 6, 2017

11988 - Fingerprint security on smartphones presents the biggest hacking threat - India Legal Live

Fingerprint security on smartphones presents the biggest hacking threat
September 2, 2017

Ex-Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi told a parliamentary standing committee that data of 40 percent of all smartphone users are accessible by the CIA

Advanced security features themselves can often become your biggest source of insecurity. Take fingerprint locking systems, for example, especially on your smartphone, that collects and stores one’s critical biometric data that ensures no one else can access your phone. There is also iris recognition software available for locking and unlocking laptops and other such devices, even door locks.

Many of these devices are often hotwired to the internet—the Internet of Things (IoT) assures all-round seamless security prospects, a huge thing today around the world. These are also the biggest threats to privacy. According to a report in The Indian Express, this is potentially more damning and a bigger threat than all the biometric data collected for Aadhaar cards by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

This has been revealed by no less than India’s former union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi, who has now been appointed as the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). According to him, says the report, this data has already been stolen from 40 percent of people using smartphones and those who have the fingerprint identification soft inbuilt or have added such a software later.

Who has this stolen data? According to Mehrishi, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US has it. This was not an off-the-cuff comment, but a comment made on July 21 before the Parliamentary standing committee on home affairs. That adds gravity to the comment.

The seriousness of the situation has come to light in the backdrop of a Wikileaks release in March which said that the CIA has been hacking into smart devices. The software targeted by the hacking tools included Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

Former union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi

India’s smartphone makers, including global brands such as Apple and Samsung and Chinese manufacturers, such as Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, Lenovo and Gionee, as well as India’s Micromax have been asked to provide security details. These include security practices, architecture, frameworks, guidelines and standards.

This will form part of the overall cyber security standards that the government is trying to set up.

The problem of using many apps is that they ask for a plethora of personal data before firing up and before being activated. If one wants to avail of the facilities provided by the free app, the trade-off is providing personal data. The report refers to a recent study by IMDEA Networks Institute of Spain which says that over 70 per cent of smartphone apps are reporting personal data to third-party companies like Google and Facebook.

Google, Facebook, Whatsapp and some others have come in for court scrutiny in India regarding privacy issues where companies have been sharing data gathered through third-party intervention. Whatsapp, for example, is one app that is humongously popular in India. When it was bought over by Facebook for an incredible $22 billion, it took along with it all the data and instantly stared sharing them with Facebook, without acquiring the consent of the user. This has been an issue that the court wants to settle.

Meanwhile, while the court battles the problem of unwarranted data sharing between two companies, all that data has been living in your smartphones and unwittingly, these have been open to hacking. Mehrishi’s comment also means that any data within a smartphone can be accessed by smart hackers, be he/she with the CIA, or the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US or even India’s own National Investigation Agency (NIA), which has been crying for more data collection facilities like the NSA.

Technically, a person’s entire life and particulars can, in was more than one, be accessed through his/her smartphone and through the several apps used and several websites that the person has accessed.

What the agencies would do with such data is not clear, but individual hackers might be able to access your bank account, for example, if you have been using your bank’s app for transactions. Today, it is possible to open fixed deposits, transfer funds and make all sorts of realignments from within your phone, using the app. These are at risk.

The security atmosphere of the world has just gotten murkier.

—India Legal Bureau
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