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, April 5, 2018

13178 - Hacking group Lulzsec India alleges massive Aadhaar and PAN data breach - Medianama

Hacking group Lulzsec India alleges massive Aadhaar and PAN data breach

Vidyut

By Vidyut ( @Vidyut vidyut@medianama.com ) April 2, 2018
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A Twitter handle of anonymous hackers (who claim to be a group) by the name Lulzsec India have tweeted about a vulnerability involving 22,000 Aadhaar and PAN cards. They have refused to provide further information till the vulnerability is patched. The screenshot they have tweeted appears to show numbered folders and image documents of an Aadhaar card and the name “Kamlesh Tiwari” written by hand – which could be the scan of a signature.

The breach does not appear to be a website vulnerability, but a poorly coded server related to PAN applications, that allows malicious hackers unlimited file management access over ftp. As of now, it is not known which server this information is on and the group refuses to reveal further details till the vulnerability is fixed. (Note: MediaNama is not publishing the link to the tweet, as it contains unredacted information about the Aadhaar in the image.)

“We all live in country where cyber security made stronger only by court orders and useless statements of denial and not secure coding practices.” said Lulzsec India when approached via private messages for more information related to the breach.

Other security issues reported by Lulzsec India include vulnerabilities that allowed logging into the Rajya Sabha server and that ISRO Bhuvan Mapper was running on 7-year-old server code and was vulnerable to all the security issues that had been revealed in that time.

Some instances of website or application breaches

July 28, 2017 – Abhinav Srivastava, co-founder of Quarth technologies created an “Aadhaar e-KYC” app that accessed the UIDAI API without authorization.
September 10, 2017 – During the Kanpur Fake Aadhaar Enrollment scam, the enrollment software was found to be reverse engineered to bypass iris scan authentication for operators.
January 4, 2018 – The Tribune had reported access to Aadhaar data could be purchased for as little as Rs. 500 on social media.
January 4, 2018 – The Quint reported that data admins could create other data admin accounts at discretion – without any checks.
January 9, 2018 – The UIDAI suspended the access of 5,000 officials for the UIDAI database without authorization (after the Tribune breach report, but apparently separate from both The Tribune and The Quint reports, as these were officials who had access – without authorization? – that got blocked)
January 12, 2018 – French security researcher “Elliot Alderson” reported vulnerabilities in the mAadhaar app

Some other large breaches of Aadhaar data

May 2, 2017 – CIS India reported that details of around 130-135 million Aadhaar Numbers, and around 100 million bank numbers have been leaked online by just four government schemes alone.
July 9, 2017 – An independent website called MagicAPK (since removed) was leaking data of 120 million Jio customers. Querying the website by phone number returned details such as name, email, circle, SIM activation date and Aadhaar number. While Jio denied the data as unauthentic, it was independently verified by many people. Initial subscribers were more affected.
July 20, 2017 – The government admitted that around 210 government websites had been leaking sensitive information including Aadhaar.
January 5, 2018 – India Today had published a sting operation that showed that details of Aadhaar card applicants could be obtained from enrollment agents for as little as Rs.2 – 5 per applicant.