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

Monday, August 21, 2017

11812 - Why India’s Poor Must Have a Right to Privacy - The Wire


Regardless of the Supreme Court’s final verdict, the false dichotomy between privacy and welfare must be expunged.

It is the poor, who need more rights, not less. Credit: Reuters

Over the course of the epoch-making case pending before the Supreme Court on the right to privacy in India, Attorney General K.K. Venugopal argued before the apex court that the right to privacy was an elitist concept and that in a country like India, ‘it is not fair and right to talk about right to privacy for such poor people.’ 

This argument is based on the notion that forsaking individual privacy for state benefits is a desirable one, since the latter entails tangible benefits for India’s teeming millions as opposed to the ‘elitist’ concept of privacy and confidentiality that involve no clear, material gain. This stance is highly problematic as it effectively implies that impoverishment is a fetter to human dignity and only the ‘rich’ can afford the cultural luxuries of an important civil liberty. This notion has plagued the operationalisation of a ‘Right to Privacy’ in many other countries, including the United States and has been detrimental to the interests of the economically backward classes.
Regardless of the final verdict of the Supreme Court in this case, on which we shall not comment here, the false dichotomy between privacy and welfare must be expunged.

A false dichotomy
Privacy is conventionally considered a subset of the most sacrosanct right guaranteed under the constitution – the right to life and personal liberty enshrined in Article 21. Having undergone many interpretations through successive decisions of the Supreme Court, this right is now understood to mean that the state cannot take away one’s liberty without following the procedure established by the law, and only when the law thus applied is just, fair and reasonable. The ‘Right to Life’ encompasses civil and political liberties, personal security and basic socio-economic welfare. There continues to exist a false perception that the latter two categories are far more significant for national development than civil liberties as they tangibly contribute to the essentials of sustaining human life-safety, food, clothing and shelter.

We offer two crucial responses.

First, a ‘life with dignity’ can surely not be sustained solely by good health and personal safety. Intangible constructs with unclear benefits such as the freedom to worship, the freedom to express oneself freely or dress as one pleases surely add value to one’s life and enables an individual to live it with dignity. As eloquently argued by Amartya Sen in The Idea of Justice, narratives on development must devise means of incorporating intangible values in its policy-making ventures. Without these intangible benefits, we turn into statistics-bereft of the value that makes us inherently human.

Second, civil and political liberties have often proved crucial for the attaining of socio-economic welfare. Despite China outperforming India on most economic indicators since independence, China still suffered a widespread famine from 1958-61 with a mortality count nearing 30 million. Sen writes how that it was a complete breakdown of public reasoning where state sponsored propaganda coupled with a clampdown on dissent brainwashed not only the citizenry but also the policymakers. While modern China is a far-cry from the China desecrated by Mao’s orthodox economic policies, there still remains huge economic disparity between the rural hinterland and the areas benefitting from one or more of the Four Cs-coast, capital, city or access to coal. Unlike India, however, the sufferers in the rural hinterland have found it much more difficult to break the shackles of poverty as they have limited avenues of campaigning for their own welfare. India, while plagued by bureaucratic malaise and inefficiency, has not suffered from a famine since independence. Instead, the apparently ‘intangible’ civil and political liberties granted by the constitution has been galvanised by the citizenry to garner improved standards in healthcare, education and land reforms. Public Interest Litigation has been effectively utilised to remedy many injustices that would have been suppressed in an authoritarian regime. A right to privacy for the poor is justified and needed for both these reasons. Without it, we not only deprive them of the dignity that is guaranteed by virtue of being human but more sinisterly deny them a fair shot at amending their socio-economic plight.

Privacy and the American dream
The US has a strongly defined judicially recognised right to privacy. However, those on the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder have been stripped of this dignity due to the mindset that the ‘intangible’ benefit of this right can always be forsaken for more tangible socio-economic benefits. In a fine book called The Poverty of Privacy Rights released earlier this year, Professor Khiara M. Bridges argues that poor mothers have been ‘disenfranchised of their right to privacy.’ She narrates how a pregnant woman needs to undergo a mandatory review process that assesses not only her nutritional status but also her health education and psychosocial status. This assessment requires the compelled yielding of information such as a woman’s support system, history of substance abuse, housing, education and financial resources, which would ideally be protected by the right to privacy that has been read into the Fourth Amendment.

Further, the judiciary has sanctioned suspiscion-less home-visits, which are again disallowed otherwise, as a pre-requisite for any form of welfare from the state. Much like Venugopal, the American judiciary has decided that the ‘poor’ are a class of individuals whose desire and ability to exercise their fundamental rights is compromised by virtue of their subsistence needs and reliance on the state for their sustenance. An autonomous choice to forsake their dignity was never given to them. The  decision was made on their behalf by the ‘rich’ who can afford the right to live with dignity.

Class disparity in big data collection
Even if we let the dignity argument rest, a misunderstanding of the relationship between privacy and poverty can have devastating consequences on tangible economic fulfilment in many ways. In today’s digital age, where the data generated by an individual is often more revealing than a search of that person’s house, data has become a commodity and has even been compared to oil in terms of its value as a resource. Studies estimate that one’s personal data combined with an individual’s purchasing habits may be as valuable as $1,200 (or more). Of course, the rich engage in more commercial transactions and therefore generate more valuable data. However, they also have more resources – both in terms of information and finance – to make an informed decision on the level of invasion they are comfortable with. In many instances, the ‘poor’ are left dealing with more invasive outcomes of the trade-off without free and informed consent.
The idea of consent is central to the understanding of privacy. Each case of an individual who enrolls himself with the Aadhaar scheme, unaware of the risks associated with his personal data being mishandled or lost, constitutes a violation of privacy, since the individual is unable to provide ‘informed’ consent. If information is gathered by the state in this manner, it is akin to holding private property hostage, indefinitely without explanation, with no remedy in sight.

When the state decides to create a digital repository of citizen’s data – with accruals ranging from PAN card information to biometrics – it raises the question as to who is the actual owner of this data, i.e. who owns the ‘property rights’ over this data. This characterisation of ‘privacy as property’ is of consequence due to the implicit assumption that property holds material value. If it is the individual who is the ultimate owner of his personal data, then one has to assume that a transfer of this property is taking place when this data is handed over to the government. For those with ‘less property’, i.e. the poor, it is therefore an even greater violation, than for the educated ‘elite’ who consent to such ‘taking’ with awareness of its consequences.

Further, at a theoretical level, Aadhaar is not providing any additional benefits to individuals but simply rectifying a system that should not have left them indigent in the first place. As argued by eminent social scientists, including Upendra Baxi, social structures and state inefficiency generate the process of ‘impoverishment’. In most instances, the poor themselves should take the least blame. The benefits linked to the Aadhaar system simply replace the existing benefits which citizens were entitled to prior to the adoption of the Aadhaar, providing little extra incentive for the common man. The claims to ‘newer’ benefits made thus far, such as the elimination of middlemen through direct cash transfer into the bank accounts of the citizen, pay little attention to the idea of ‘fair price’ paid to the commoner for handing over his data, when viewed as property, to the state.

Thus, in the context of the state ‘taking’ away property without ‘giving’ equitable benefits in return, especially in the case of the marginalised, it seems that the attorney-general’s statement is a false dichotomy at best and a paradox at worst. It is the poor, who need more rights, not less. If it is recognised as a fundamental right, it will need to be balanced against countervailing rights on a case-to-case basis. However, the balancing act must be undertaken without prejudice to the individual’s economic background.

In a day and age when public discourse spreads at the click of a button, it is imperative that we correct certain notions of egalitarianism that we build up in our minds on privilege and its consequences.

Our innate desire to patronise the poor by looking at them as inherently unequal to us is dangerous and could fetter the privacy regime in India even if it is judicially recognised this week. By denying dignity to the poor, we reject the essence of our thriving democracy at its core.

Agnidipto Tarafder is a faculty member of  The West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences. Among other subjects in International and Constitutional Law, he teaches a course on Law and Privacy.


Arindrajit Basu is a graduate of the same institution and will be pursuing his LLM in Public International Law at the University of Cambridge. He has previously worked for the Cyber Initiative of the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.