AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 12461 - Editorial: Consent can be manufactured

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, December 5, 2017

12461 - Editorial: Consent can be manufactured - Medianama

Editorial: Consent can be manufactured

By Nikhil Pahwa ( @nixxin , +NikhilPahwa , nikhil@medianama.com ) November 30, 2017

How can a user prove that they haven’t given consent to something?

For example, how does Nehmat Kaur, who did not consent to linking her Aadhaar with her bank account prove that she hasn’t given her consent? It’s her word versus that of the bank.

Nehmat Kaur

@Nehmat_K

.@AxisBankSupport I did not consent to linking my #Aadhaar with my bank account. I just got a message saying that my #Aadhaar is linked! A photocopy of my #Aadhaar was on your records given long ago but I specifically told my branch to not link it.

11:48 PM - Nov 29, 2017

You might say biometrics may be needed for consent, but that isn’t a case here, and it’s probably not going to happen because it’s cumbersome to make people queue up outside bank branches for fingerprint authentication, like they have to queue up outside ATM queues last year. You could say that a One Time Password (OTP) can be sent for confirming consent, and a trail of digital records could be kept, confirming that data.

But that can be manufactured too: digital information in malleable and can be manufactured. There is precedence here, especially when it comes to telecom:

Telecom operators in India have a history of “manufactured consent”, in the literal, non-political sense: there was massive fraud in the Mobile VAS ecosystem, where customers were billed for subscribing to services that they never subscribed to. It happened to me a few times as well, once where I woke up in the morning to find that I had been billed for purchasing an animation at 3AM, when I was asleep. Often, telecom operators had logs to prove consent, and these could be faked. Click here to watch Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Paytm and One97 founder, explain how logs were manufactured to indicate out-bound dialers and consent for purchases of ringtones, when none of this had happened. If call logs can be manufactured, OTP logs can be manufactured too.

So how does someone prove that they haven’t consented?

Even when the logs haven’t been faked, and there is a tickbox which has been checked, how does someone prove understand and intent?Rahul Ajatshatru, lawyer, at our #NAMAprivacy Bangalore, said that “consent comes from when there is a meeting of minds, where people actually appreciate what they’re agreeing to. If the user does not understand the usage or the nuances, there is no consent even if I’ve clicked I agree. It can be challenged that I never thought it meant that. And courts have interpreted: it’s about what the parties understood what it meant at the time of signing.”

In the same vein, how can customers who found that Airtel had opened their payments bank prove that they have not given actual consent here? Sure, they might have clicked a checkbox, but is that really consent? Can consent not be taken with misinformation? We also have a history of mis-selling of telecom plans in India, where customers are shown a different plan from what they are signed up for.

With more services being connected to Aadhaar, and new users, facing issues of information asymmetry and bounded rationality coming online, the challenges that companies that sign up for this as they scale will face will not be around getting consent, but in proving that the consent taken is for real, and is informed and valid.