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

12893 - Five Aadhaar developments from just the past week that should disturb you - Scroll.In


Five Aadhaar developments from just the past week that should disturb you

From stolen biometrics to belated security efforts from UIDAI – keeping track of what has happened with Aadhaar this week.
Five Aadhaar developments from just the past week that should disturb you

HT Photo
4 hours ago
Rohan Venkataramakrishnan


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 of stolen biometrics being used to steal rations, an admission that the government tried to file a criminal case against those who reveal vulnerabilities, and a belated request for people not to give away the very demographic data that has been leaked by official websites.

It is hard to keep track of all that has happened, so here is a quick wrap of developments from just the last week.

1. Stolen biometrics
The Unique Identification Authority of India, the body that manages Aadhaar, has insisted all along that its biometric databases are secure, even if state websites have been leaking demographic Aadhaar data for some time now. Last week, news reports revealed that two fair shop price owners had been arrested in Gujarat for siphoning rations using stolen biometric data. This is, of course, exactly what Aadhaar was built to prevent, with the belief being that a biometric-linked ID would prevent such leakages. UIDAI’s response was to point out that the biometrics had not been stolen from the Aadhaar database, but from a local repository.

This is not a breach of Aadhaar security. According to news report itself Surat police too has confirmed this. It appears a case of local collection of biometrics by the state PDS department, not biometric collection by UIDAI or Authentication by Aadhaar system.

— Aadhaar (@UIDAI) February 4, 2018
As many have pointed out, though, this technicality offers little solace. After all, the fingerprints in the Aadhaar database and the one in the state repository will be one and the same. Cracking the state database is equivalent to getting Aadhaar data, because it is not like the individual can change their fingerprints. As many have reported, there are many other state databases around the country through which biometric data can be procured and, because of how much demographic data has been easily leaked on government websites, matching these becomes quite easy.

Replay of stolen biometrics is no different from forging somebody’s signature. The law will deal with such case in the same manner. 2/2

— Aadhaar (@UIDAI) February 4, 2018
The UIDAI’s response to this? “Replay of stolen biometrics is no different from forging somebody’s signature.” If biometrics are no different from a signature, what makes Aadhaar any better than the old system?

2. Fraudulent cases
In a response to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla admitted on Tuesday that money to the tune of nearly Rs 1.5 crores had been fraudulently withdrawn from Public Sector Bank accounts using customers’ Aadhaar numbers. The response in Parliament details how this has happened, with cases seeing Aadhaar numbers fraudulently mapped against bank accounts, sometimes by banking correspondents themselves. Shukla’s reply says the government has taken steps to prevent such cases from recurring. But considering how often people find that their Aadhaar numbers have already been linked to certain bank accounts, and how massive the job of having to link every account to a unique ID is going to be, it is evident that this is only the tip of the iceberg.

3. FIR against whistleblowers
After a report by The Tribune newspaper in early January in which it was revealed that demographic details for every single Aadhaar number were available for just a small cost, and that spending a little more money would let you print out anyone’s Aadhaar card as well, the government denied the story and UIDAI asked for a First Information Report against the reporter as well as those named in the story. When a number of people criticised the government for attacking the press when all it was doing was simply reporting on official vulnerabilities, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said he has “suggested” that UIDAI request the newspaper and its journalist help the police in investigating the case. The FIR, when it was registered, simply named “unknown persons”. In response to a query in the Rajya Sabha last week, however, when asked whether UIDAI has filed an FIR against the whistle blowers, Prasad’s answer was “Yes, sir.”

4. Laminated cards
On Tuesday, the UIDAI released a statement saying printing Aadhaar cards on plastic sheets makes it unusable and prone to data theft. The authority said that plastic or PVC Aadhaar “smart cards” often make the QR codes dysfunctional. It also added that people should be “watchful for the protection of their privacy and recommended not to share their Aadhaar number or personal details to unauthorised agencies for getting it laminated, or printed on plastic card”.

This seems broadly like a good warning, except that it is also horribly belated: Aadhaar smart cards are all over the country and moreover, it seems as if the UIDAI has only just discovered that the sharing of Aadhaar numbers and other demographic data is dangerous. It said earlier in the year that it would be introducing a new system by which people can get Aadhaar authentication without having to share their UID numbers. But Aadhaar numbers have been shared for years now, not least by more than 210 government websites, and UIDAI has itself tried to insist that leaked Aadhaar numbers are not a problem. This new level of caution seems like a good thing, but what use is it if the horse has already bolted?

5. More exclusion
Although it is impossible keep track of all the ways Aadhaar is believed to have ended up becoming a tool for exclusion, some news stories stand out because of their severity. This week, activists in Jharkhand said there had been another starvation death, which they suspected was linked to a 30-year-old woman being denied rations since October because the Aadhaar-enabled machine at the local ration shop did not authenticate her biometrics. This is only the latest in a number of cases where people are believed to have died because of exclusion from the system as a result of Aadhaar.



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