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, May 10, 2018

13496 - Aadhaar Articles Dated 9th May 2018


The Hindu
Students wishing to take admission into degree courses through the Degree Online Services of Telangana (DOST) need not visit helpline centres for submitting their biometric details if their Aadhaar cards are linked to a mobile phone. They can prove their credentials by unlocking the system based on ...





The Hans India
Aadhaar card enrollment campaign inaugurated. Chanchalguda: Aadhar Card enrollment campaign was inaugurated for the inmates of Central Prison Hyderabad. The three day camp will end on May 11or may extend to some more days in order to process the data. As per the instructions of DG of ...






Mid-Day
Elliot Alderson, the French ethical hacker who exposed flaws in the Aadhaar application has finally come out of the woodwork and revealed his true identity. He is Robert Baptiste, 28, a resident of Toulouse in France, who works as an app developer. Speaking to mid-day once again, Baptiste explains ...






HuffPost India
A week after HuffPost broke the news that a group of civil servants was behind Lokniti Foundation, an NGO whose public interest litigation (PIL) had led the Indian government to force millions of Indians to link their mobile SIM cards to their Aadhaar numbers, an RTI filed by Caravan has found that ten of ...






Trak.in (blog)
It seems that the suggestion to make Aadhaar mandatory has been raised to stop ticketing fraud. Salman Khan had developed a unique software which bypassed IRCTC's captcha mechanism and bank's OTP requirement to churn out thousands of tatkal tickets in a day. Rising ticketing related frauds ...



Analytics India Magazine
Prime Minister Narendra Modi hit out at the opposition parties for resisting technology. He quoted the examples of the Congress party, along with others, resisting the use of biometric information-based Aadhaar card or electronic voting machines. According to a news wire, PM Modi added that despite ...






The New Indian Express
"Individuals from the transgender community were facing hassles in obtaining a PAN card and this problem was further magnified as Aadhaar had the third gender category but not PAN. Hence, the transgenders were not able to link their PAN with their Aadhaar due to this anomaly," a senior official had ...






GNS News (satire) (press release) (blog)
(G.N.S) Dt. 08 New Delhi You soon will be needing your Aadhaar card for booking rail tickets on IRCTC's website, claimed a Mumbai Mirror report. According to the publication, if the recommendation of a new railway report will be implemented then a customer will have to submit their Aadhaar card ...








Times of India (blog)
Aadhaar may become mandatory to book rail tickets. 1 sec ago. Kapil Sibal withdrew the plea challenging Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu's rejection of impeachment motion against CJI Dipak Misra from the Supreme Court. The petition was filed by two Congress Rajya Sabha MPs - Partap ...






SPAMfighter News (press release)
A website for seeding Aadhaar to various services is by CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd., which is one special purpose organisation of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. This organisation supervises the CSC programme's implementation through service centres counting 1.70 ...






Kaplan Herald
BENGALURU: State police have removed the of victims of the Gruha Kalyan housing scam from their official website. The action comes after TOI in its May 3, 2018 edition (“Karnataka police share Aadhaar details of housing scam victims on website”) reported that police had uploaded the information.






Times of India
The accused even got an Aadhaar card made in the name of the girl to show she was 18 years old. Asif Nagar ... "How Azeem managed to get the Aadhaar card on her name showing she was 18 years old is still being probed,'' assistant commissioner of police (Asif Nagar) Ashok Chakrawarthy said.






Telangana Today
Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, Navin Mittal, Commissioner of Technical Education, said the candidate's name on the intermediate hall ticket and Aadhaar card has to be matched at the time of registration. If there is a mismatch of name, candidates can approach any one out of the 74 ...




MediaNama.com
We have, in the past, and particularly in the case of Aadhaar, seen the involvement of start ups in government projects resulting in conflict of interest and giving a small group of powerful people access to shape policy that impacts the entire country. India lacks data protection laws and there is already an ...






The Hindu
Certificate verification for engineering admissions will be done online from this year including the caste and income certificates, the TSCHE Chairman T. Papi Reddy said. If the candidates' Aadhaar cards are linked to their mobile phones, candidates just need to enter the number of the caste or income ...






Business Line
With reference to 'Aadhaar-ration link saves ₹17,000 crore' (May 8), this linking has enabled the government to unearth whopping 2.62 crore bogus ration card to save ₹17,000 crore to the exchequer. So it is unfathomable why certain political parties, intellectuals among others are objecting to it ...






Financial Express
Any EPFO subscriber who has activated and got his UAN Aadhaar seeded, can avail this facility. The good news is that this functionality is not dependent on the employer. The member is required to digitally sign the nomination after giving nomination details online. Aadhaar-based eSign is being used ...






Telangana Today
“We have set a target of distributing 8.30 lakh cheques every day during the week-long programme starting on May 10,” Ali told Telangana Today. Brushing aside rumours that cheques and passbooks will only be given to farmers who produce Aadhaar card, he said: “If the farmer has the Aadhaar card, ...






The Hitavada
The aid will be deposited directly in the Aadhaar-linked bank accounts of the affected farmers, and none of the identified beneficiaries will get the aid either in cash or kind. If an eligible beneficiary does not have Aadhaar-linked bank account, aid will still be deposited in his/her account on the basis of ...






Times of India
On May 3, I received a call from a man, who identified himself as a customer care executive, and asked me to reveal my Aadhaar number for the verification process. He then sent me an SMS which he asked me to forward to 121 (the customer care number),” Nidhi Sharma, a resident of Sector 10A, told ...






The Telegraph India
Some time back, the government of Andhra Pradesh put up on its website the Aadhaar details of a large number of citizens. When the lapse was pointed out, the government hastily removed some of the details, but claimed that it was done to provide transparency regarding beneficiaries of certain ...






Live Law
The parents of the petitioner will hand over all the necessary documents (Aadhaar card, passport etc.) relating to the petitioner…The State of Karnataka is directed to provide adequate security to the petitioner so that she can travel to Bangalore. If there will be any threat perception, she can make a ...






The Hindu
Azeem manipulated her age on Aadhaar card to show her as a major, though she was a minor and converted her to Islam. “After verifying the mobile phone location, we came to know that they were in Nizamabad. A team was sent to trace the girl,” Mr Chakravarthy said. On Sunday, Azeem noticed the ...






News18
He listed issues like Rahul Gandhi visiting JNU when the anti-national debate was raging, the party opposing the use of technology like EVMs and demanding the use of paper ballots, preferring cash over digital modes of payment and questioning Aadhaar in courts and Parliament despite pioneering it.