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

Thursday, February 8, 2018

12889 - Aadhaar Articles Dated 8th February 2018



Economic Times
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday was told that vulnerability of citizens' demographic and biometric data collected under Aadhaar to leaks is ... "Vulnerability (of personal data collected under Aadhaar to leaks) is violation of rights," senior counsel Kapil Sibal told the five judge constitution ...





NDTV
Aadhaar, the 12-digit unique identity number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), is also required for children. Aadhaar card is an essential identity card that is now required to be linked with multiple facilities like provident funds, bank accounts, permanent account numbers, ...






Economic Times
Another recent example concerns the widely-quoted estimate of $11 billion annual savings (or potential savings) due to Aadhaar. The original source of this estimate is the Bank's World Development Report 2016. On page 195, the report mentions that many subsidies in India "are being converted to ...






Economic Times
BAREILLY / MEERUT: Many of us might think that our lives can continue as usual since there is more than a month left to link Aadhaar with various financial accounts and documents. But did you know that there has been an increasing number of cases were people have been denied basic benefits ...



Times of India
NEW DELHI: Allaying members' fear over security of Aadhaar data, Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday said in Lok Sabha that there has been no ... The minister, however, said no one will be denied government benefits due to absence of Aadhaar as other options are also available.






Scroll.in
Even as the Supreme Court hears challenges to the constitutional validity of Aadhaar, news about the various weaknesses of the Indian government's project to give every Indian a 12-digit biometrics-linked unique identity continues to surface. Over the past week alone, there has been a disturbing case ...



Livemint
The initial deadline to upgrade these devices was 1 June 2017, but it has been extended several times. The latest is the sixth extension. The UIDAI wants the biometric devices registered with the Aadhaar system for encryption key management. The Aadhaar authentication server can individually identify ...






Moneycontrol.com
To ensure compliance with anti-money laundering rules, leading stock exchange BSE today asked mutual fund investors to submit PAN and Aadhaar by March 31, 2018, failing which their folios would be closed. This follows the government's amending in June the Prevention of Money Laundering ...






Moneycontrol.com
Initially envisaged by the Congress alliance, when it was in power, as means to provide a subsidy to the poor and prevent benefit leakage, Aadhaar has since become a sort of default identity with the BJP government linking it to everything from PAN cards to mobile SIM cards and bank accounts.






The Hindu
An attempt by the police to identify the pregnant woman who was found butchered, has failed. A police officer associated with the investigation said they tried to identify her using her fingerprints that can be found in the Aadhaar database. But they couldn't get her fingerprints as they were erased due to ...






Firstpost
While two cases of fraudulent mapping of Aadhaar numbers were reported in Bank of India involving a sum of Rs 1.37 crore, another two cases surfaced in Syndicate Bank involving Rs 2.26 lakh. In both cases surfacing in the Bank of India, the government said fraudulent mapping of Aadhaar numbers ...






Times of India
Baljeet Singh, 69, a retired government employee, told police he received a call from an unknown person claiming himself to be an official of UIDAI, the agency responsible for issuing Aadhaar cards. "He asked me to give details of necessary documents to verify his Aadhaar has got linked with his bank ...






Business Standard
The staff of four public sector banks (PSBs) has been alleged to have salted away depositors' money by misusing the latter's Aadhaar-based authentication. The banks — Allahabad Bank, Bank of India, Syndicate Bank, and UCO Bank – recently reported the matter to the Union government, complaining ...






The Indian Express
You spoke on Aadhaar Wednesday. What are your concerns? My concerns are that privacy is going to be a major issue in future… The Supreme Court judgment is an indication. We are damaging our own future through Aadhaar. It is an unending process. Kids will be born, they will need Aadhaar.






Times of India
Security researcher Srinivas Kodali told TOI, "For seeking Aadhaar, a notification has to be issued by the agency. However, HMDA did not issue any notification for using Aadhaar for the complaints. Earlier, the Telangana police department was asking for Aadhaar number and OTP for online viewing of ...






NewsClick
Recent cases have come to light that not only can fake biometrics be provided to create “ghost” Aadhaar numbers for non-existent people, but that biometrics of real people can also be stolen relatively easily. This defeats the government's stated purpose behind launching Aadhaar: to provide a foolproof ...






Eastern Mirror
7 (PTI): There has been no breach of Aadhaar data and a majority of the country's people trust the scheme as it is completely safe, Union IT Minister Ravi ... Terming Aadhaar a game changer, Prasad said in Lok Sabha that as of now 120 crore people have the Aadhaar cards and 57 crore bank accounts ...






Business Standard
"The data with UIDAI is safe," he said. The Minister said the government is open to suggestions on improving the Aadhaar, and added that it was a law passed by Parliament. "There is a law passed by the Parliament, anyone who misuses the Aadhaar data will be sent to jail and there is provision for fine ...






Times of India
AHMEDABAD: A dead man shopping? A web designer, Tarun Sureja, 32, a resident of Silver Gardanier Apartment in Gota made it possible by modifying a PDF copy of his own Aadhaar card, inserting the name of a dead man, Ajay Rathod. He used this to procure a credit card from a finance company.






LatestLY
New Delhi, February 7: After the Philippines showed interest in understanding the unique identification system- Aadhaar, India's neighbour Pakistan also has plans to come up with an Aadhaar-like move to minimise corruption. According to a report by Bloomberg, Pakistan plans an Aadhaar-like move to ...






The Quint
Even as the Supreme Court continues to hear petitions against making Aadhaar mandatory, with several alleged instances of misuse of data, a public hearing conducted by the Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan and Satark Nagrik Sangathan at the Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi on 5 February, ...






BFSI Post Magazine | Elets
“As per data reported by Public Sector Banks (PSBs), there have been incidents of money being fraudulently withdrawn from bank accounts using the customers' Aadhaar number in a few banks,” Shiv Pratap Shukla, Minister of State for Finance. He further said that measures have been taken to prevent ...