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 19, 2018

13312 - Govt wants to link flight tickets to Aadhaar, privacy activists call it a terrible idea - The News Minute

Govt wants to link flight tickets to Aadhaar, privacy activists call it a terrible idea
Ministry of Civil Aviation is rolling out Aadhaar-based paperless boarding using biometric verification but experts are critical of the decision.
The Civil Aviation Ministry plans to roll out a project under which domestic passengers can link their Aadhaar to air tickets at the time of booking. This they say would allow passengers to travel to the airport without a valid ID card, as biometric verification will be done at the airport to confirm their identity. Making the boarding process paperless, passengers will, however, need to carry a mobile phone with their e-boarding card, which will then be scanned at security and at the boarding gate. This the Ministry claims will remove cases of fake tickets and help locate missing passengers at airports.

In June last year, the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Jayant Sinha had launched a report on ‘DigiYatra’ and briefed the media about the ‘DigiYatra’ initiative of the Ministry. He claimed that the initiative will develop a digital ecosystem that will ensure a seamless, consistent and paperless service for the customers.

Under this initiative, the flyers’ biometrics will be checked and verified using infrastructure like retina scan, fingerprint scanners etc and the Aadhaar-linked airline database will show which flight they are to board and which parts of security and boarding procedure they have cleared and which ones are left, thus eliminating the need to show paper ID cards, paper tickets and boarding passes.

The process is not yet finalised and some changes are expected. Earlier this week, Aviation Secretary RN Choubey told the Times of India that the government will issue a template for this “Digi-yatra” by the end of this month and this process could be flagged off at Bengaluru and Hyderabad as early as July 2018. However, linking tickets to Aadhaar is not mandatory and hence, all the airports will continue to keep the existing paper-based boarding system also.

A pilot was conducted at Hyderabad and Bengaluru airports over a year ago and the results of the same are being considered to improve the systems. When TNM contacted Archana Muthappa, GM & Head for Corporate Communications & CSR at Bengaluru International Airport, she confirmed that there will be changes in the process but no details are known yet as consultations are still going on.

"A Technical Working Committee (TWC) comprising AAI and a few leading private airports are working on it. Specific details of the Policy – currently in the final stages of development – will be communicated by MoCA. As such, until MoCA communicates details of the Digi-Yatra policy it may not be prudent on our part to put out a story. The information we currently have is dated and based on a pilot conducted over a year ago," said Archana, who confirmed that biometric infrastucture, like retina scan, fingerprint scanning machines etc, were used in the pilot.
However, the move by the Civil Aviation Ministry comes at a time when the Supreme Court is still debating the validity and scope of Aadhaar amidst concerns of big data misuse and surveillance.

Calling the project a terrible idea, Nikhil Pahwa, founder of MediaNama and Internet Freedom Foundation said that fingerprint authentication is a probabilistic science based on percentage accuracy of matching. “Someone will be refused entry or passage at some point in time, because fingerprints may not match. It will always fail for someone somewhere. We've seen high failure rates in Jharkhand,” argued Nikhil.
There have been concerns about fingerprint authentication for people who do some physical labour and senior citizens. Countering the project’s purpose, Nikhil said that the new process will, in fact, end up resulting in long queues and chaos. “Given how incompetent our government is with securing data, this will be just another way that citizens’ data could leak. Aadhaar, if it is allowed to continue, should have a very limited use case, and should not use biometrics. Biometrics, once leaked, are compromised forever, especially because of their permanence.”

A report in Medianama also argued that it would be naïve to believe that linking Aadhaar to tickets will eliminate the cases of fake tickets as people who want to travel with fake tickets will continue to use the existing paper-based system.
Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and digital rights activist warned that this was yet another form of making AADHAAR de facto unavoidable.

“The only other place where biometrics based identity has been used for movement in the name of ease and efficiency is in China. It always starts in the name of increased efficiency and ease, quickly devolving into a system where data is gathered and used for control. The Chinese Government can now stop people from buying air and travel tickets based on their social credit score i.e. if it does not approve of someone's political views, ethnic identity etc.”

She questioned why one needed Aadhaar for enabling mobile boarding passes. “Why does one need Aadhaar for enabling mobile boarding passes? Any form of identity card should be acceptable. Paper savings can be achieved without AADHAAR.”
Srinivas Kodali, an independent researcher focusing on intelligent transportation systems, questioned the validity of Aadhaar as a whole, given the ongoing case in the Supreme Court. Pointing out inherent contradictions in the government machinery, he said, “The UIDAI and Attorney General in the Supreme Court are contesting that no one can use Aadhaar for surveillance or tracking while the Civil Aviation Ministry wants to also track where a passenger is inside the airport to avoid delays in boarding. The Civil Aviation Ministry probably is not informing the public that Aadhaar is required for their no-fly list program. This is what China is doing to deny its citizens airport/train services based on how obedient they are about government rules.”


Suggesting other ways to reduce paper usage, Srinivas gave examples of airports around the world which, “allow different levels of security checks and faster check-ins for a premium price which the business class travellers are used to. The current process of scanning barcodes is faster. Bringing in any untested technology is simply going to increase boarding time thus resulting in flight delays.”
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