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

Saturday, September 15, 2018

13893 - DNA profiling bill: Pinning you down with data by Usha Ramanathan - India Today

DNA profiling bill: Pinning you down with data


                 Illustration by Tanmoy Chakraborty

This is an era of databases. There are biometric databases: fingerprints, iris scans, photographs-which are to work with facial recognition technologies-and, now, DNA. The DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2018, was introduced in the Lok Sabha during the monsoon session of Parliament.

The desire to create a DNA database of the people of this country has been nurtured by the CDFD (Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics) in Hyderabad, and supported by the Department of Biotechnology, since at least 2003.

Together, these two agencies had, in a Study Report presented to the Planning Commission in the lead-up to the 12th Plan, outlined their aim as: "Human population analysis with a view to elicit signature profiling of different caste populations of India to use them in forensic DNA fingerprinting and develop DNA databases."

The first draft bill was prepared in 2007. Since then, it has been considered by the A.P. Shah Committee of Experts on Privacy and by a committee set up to consider all aspects of the bill (in 2013-14, I was a member of both committees), and consultations have been held in the department of biotechnology, in all of which the Human DNA Profiling Bill has been critiqued and challenged.

The Law Commission was then brought into the act, but there is nothing in its report to indicate that it knew of the objections to the bill. Significantly, it treated privacy as an academic issue, because the question of whether privacy was a fundamental right or not had still not been decided by the Supreme Court. That could explain why privacy has been given short shrift in the report, and why the bill introduced in Parliament closely resembles the Law Commission's draft.

A database is only as secure as its weakest link, and misuse and abuse of DNA data and data leaks are serious matters
The problems with DNA are legion. It is not that DNA is not more accurate than other biometrics currently in use. After all, as the UIDAI CEO said to the Supreme Court, fingerprints had not worked to authenticate, even once, among 6 per cent of those who attempted to use the system, and iris scans hadn't worked for 8.5 per cent of those who tried.

DNA will not be worse. And, yet, DNA too is only probabilistic, not definitive. It is not only the science, but human intervention that adds to the complexity: collection of DNA from a crime scene, for example, chain of custody and contamination are acknowledged problems producing wrong matches.

Experts warn of erroneous matches due to false cold hits, cross-contamination of samples, mislabelling of samples, misrepresentation of test results, errors in entering in registers, and even intentional planting of DNA. DNA evidence can be tendered in a court, but it does not stand on its own; it must be corroborated.

It is no secret that criminal investigation is crumbling, and the home ministry has had to issue guidelines in July this year to train the police to understand the need to 'secure the crime scene', 'preliminary survey' to collect evidence, 'contamination control', sketching of the scene of crime and photography of the spot. DNA evidence is too sensitive to be left in such hands.
It's no secret that criminal investigation is crumbling- the home ministry even had to issue guidelines in July. DNA evidence is too sensitive to be left in such hands

A database, it is wisely said, is only as secure as its weakest link, and misuse and abuse of DNA data and data leaks are serious matters. A worry about databases is 'function creep'-that is, the information is collected for one purpose but its use keeps expanding.

That is the temptation of databases, and this bill encourages such wide use. It pretends to be a criminal database, but includes uses such as 'maternity and paternity', issues relating to 'pedigree', 'immigration or emigration', 'abandoned or disputed children and related issues' and, expanding the UIDAI's biometric scale to span 'issues relating to establishment of individual identity'.

As the secretary at the department of biotechnology reportedly said in response to a question, the UID may be linked with the DNA database later, when enabling regulations are in place.

Usha Ramanathan works on the jurisprudence of law and poverty. She was on the A.P. Shah expert committee on privacy and the DBT panel on the DNA profiling bill



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