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, December 29, 2017

12577 - Foreign Firm Contracted For Aadhaar On FBI Radar For Installing Secret Code In US Biometric Machines - Outlook India

27 DECEMBER 2017Last Updated at 6:11 PMINTERNATIONALNATIONAL

Foreign Firm Contracted For Aadhaar On FBI Radar For Installing Secret Code In US Biometric Machines

In a secret deal, a French company Safran Group’s subsidiary company purchased a code from a Kremlin-connected firm, incorporated it into its own software to boost performance, and hid its existence from the FBI
ANIRUDDHA DHAR
Foreign Firm Contracted For Aadhaar On FBI Radar For Installing Secret Code In US Biometric Machines
REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE
Software for analysing fingerprints used by the FBI and more than 18,000 other US law enforcement agencies contains Russian code. This piece of news should worry Americans as well as Indians, who are being enrolled for Aadhaar.
In a secret deal, the subsidiary of French company Safran Group purchased a code from a Kremlin-connected firm, incorporated it into its own software to boost performance, and hid its existence from the FBI, two former employees of Safran Group told BuzzFeed News.
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The revelation should raise red flag in India, as Safran (“Safran Identity & Security) is one of the companies chosen to take part in an unprecedented programme called Aadhaar to count everybody residing in India and then assign each person a unique identification number”. The details are mentioned on the Paris-based company’s website. 
Outlook reached out to the UIDAI and Safran Group and Nandan Nilekani for their response on Thursday. While the UIDAI is expected to respond by the second week of January, 2018, the French company's India office is closed till January 2.  We will update the story once we receive their responses.  
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According to a response to an RTI query in 2015, one of the companies which has been given the contract by the UIDAI on July 30, 2010 for implementation of biometric under the Aadhaar scheme was L-1 Identity Solutions Operating Co Pvt Ltd, headquartered in the US. A month after signing the contract, L1 Identity Solutions was acquired by Safran Group. On February 2, 2011, the UIDAI signed a contract with Sagem Morpho Security Pvt Ltd, which is owned by Safran SA Group, for the purchase of biometric authentication devices.
The allegations raise concerns that Russian hackers could compromise US law enforcement computer systems. One of the whistleblowers, Philippe Desbois, told BuzzFeed News that officials in Safran subsidiary Sagem Sécurité, later renamed Morpho, were worried about the FBI learning the truth of the code's origin, affecting their deal.
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The makers of the code, Papillon Systems, regularly works with law enforcement agencies in Russia, including the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia's modern-day spy agency. US intelligence agencies say the FSB was linked to efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
In August, The Times of India reported that contracts signed with foreign companies by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), custodian of Aadhaar data, show that  they got "full access" to classified data, including fingerprints, iris scan information, and personal information like date of birth, address and mobile number of the applicants. They were also allowed to store the data for seven years.
It was revealed through an RTI application filed by Bengaluru-based Col Matthew Thomas, one of the petitioners in the right to privacy case currently being heard in Supreme Court.
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The RTI reply, as mentioned by the ToI report, showed that the nature of the contracts contradicted UIDAI's statements that no private entity had access to unencrypted Aadhaar data. The contract with L-1 Identity Solutions Operating says the company was given Aadhaar data access "as part of its job". Morpho and Accenture Services Pvt Ltd are two other firms that were given identical contracts with two-year (2010 to 2012) Aadhaar data access.
“They told me, ‘we will have big problems if the FBI is aware about the origin of the algorithm,’ " Desbois, the Safran subsidiary's former CEO of Russia operations, told BuzzFeed News.
“It was always the intonation like we have done something bad that is a secret between us and that we should not repeat it to anybody,” he added.
Desbois has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Safran in retaliation, alleging the company fraudulently took more than $1 billion from US law enforcement agencies at every level. Safran did not deny the existence of Russian code in court filings, according to the report, but instead argued that it is not responsible for the actions of a subsidiary.
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The FBI declined to answer questions but issued a statement to BuzzFeed.
In August, while hearing a petition against the Aadhaar, a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court ruled that Indians enjoy a fundamental right to privacy, that it is intrinsic to life and liberty and thus comes under Article 21 of the Indian constitution.
The petitioners had contended that the biometric data and iris scan that was being collected for issuing Aadhaar cards violated the citizen’s fundamental right to privacy as their personal data was not being protected and was vulnerable to exposure and misuse.
This month, the government extended the deadline for mandatory Aadhaar linking from December 31 to March 31, 2018.
This extension will be for 139 services for which the deadline is currently December 31, 2017. The extension, would in all likelihood, include the mandatory linkage of Aadhaar with bank accounts.
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