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, November 9, 2017

12335 - How demonetisation, GST and Aadhaar united the Left, Right and Centre in India - Scroll.In

How demonetisation, GST and Aadhaar united the Left, Right and Centre in India
A shared concern for civil freedoms has created an unusual anti-Modi coalition.


                       Himanshu Sharma/REUTERS

It is rare to suffer a double shock on a single day of the kind we experienced on November 8, 2016. That night, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a crazy plan to replace high denomination currency notes, and citizens of the United States elected a man who will almost certainly be remembered as one of the nation’s worst presidents.

Experts on the Left, like Amartya Sen, Jean Dreze and Prabhat Patnaik, criticised the note swap, but their arguments, however sound, could be dismissed as the rationalisations of those who would oppose any policy proposed by Modi. These critics were joined by a number of free market enthusiasts, who saw the move as at best a misguided attempt at uncovering illicit wealth and at worst a vicious attack on private property. Ajay Shah and Ila Patnaik of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Devangshu Dutta and Amit Varma were among such critics. 

Sadanand Dhume, a keen supporter of the Modi government in its initial years, who contributes regularly to the Right-wing Wall Street Journal, was gently sceptical at first, calling the move an “audacious gamble”, but by mid-December referred to it as a debacle.

As the lines that formed outside banks and ATMs did not recede; as the unpreparedness of the government and the Reserve Bank of India grew obvious; as new rules, U-turns and broken promises piled up; as the administration shifted the goalpost from targeting black money, counterfeiting, and terror funding to encouraging digital transactions; as the economic ramifications of the move became apparent, the unexpected coalition between the Left, Right and Centre strengthened. 

Business leaders like Gurcharan Das and Deepak Parekh shifted away from their initial praise, with the latter stating “demonetisation has derailed the economy”, in an interview that was hastily taken down from the News 18 website. International observers from Larry Summers and Paul Krugman to Steve Forbes came out against the move as well. It felt like the only economists still supporting Modi’s decision were those with close ties to the regime, like Bibek Debroy, Surjit Bhalla and Jagdish Bhagwati.
The Uttar Pradesh elections in February-March 2017 proved that the public at large had taken Modi’s claims at face value. Demonetisation was, in the short run at least, a stroke of political genius. The pain it caused, however, was not forgotten. 

When the administration botched the Goods and Services Tax rollout a few months later, traders were unforgiving, and a number of commentators interpreted the confusion as ineptness rather than inevitable teething pains. The Gujarat polls in December will tell us how deep the anger runs among those who have suffered a double blow.

The Goods and Services Tax consolidated the loose coalition between a certain section of the Left and Right, and this has been strengthened further by the government’s most ambitious and potentially most destructive policy: making Aadhaar ubiquitous. Aadhaar was, of course an initiative of the previous government, but under Modi a constant mission creep has transformed it from a method of reducing leakages while delivering services, to a mandatory identifier for everything from school and hospital admissions to telephone connections and bank accounts.

Dangers of Aadhaar
The technology undergirding Aadhaar is not indigenous. Despite our vaunted software skills, the core biometric identification system was set up using technology supplied by the foreign corporations Morpho and L-1 Identity Solutions. From the United Progressive Alliance days, the links these companies have with intelligence services in the United States and France have been a source of concern. These were heightened in August by a Wikileaks report suggesting the Central Intelligence Agency has gained access to the Aadhaar database.

Every day provides a new example of how gullible citizens are being defrauded by digitally savvy cheats. Every week shows us how the government cannot be trusted to keep our data private. Limitations in the identification system and short cuts taken by operators have led to a series of disasters, from starvation deaths in Jharkhand to stalled disbursals to needy farmers in Maharashtra.

The greatest threat posed by a ubiquitous Aadhaar is its potential to become the infrastructural backbone of a dictatorship. We underestimate at our peril the potential for India to take an authoritarian turn, considering how a number of constitutional authorities from the Election Commission to the Reserve Bank of India appear to have compromised their independence. That is the biggest difference between the United States under Donald Trump and India under Modi. Trump is far less qualified for office, but has been prevented thus far by a robust system of checks and balances from doing something truly dreadful.

Our Supreme Court continues to assert its independence, but has proved how justice delayed can be justice denied. Even as it upheld the fundamental right to privacy, the court, which did little to help citizens in distress through the trauma of demonetisation, has allowed the government virtually untrammelled power to impose Aadhaar linkages on the population. Even if it produces a judgement that gives relief to a few holdouts, much of the damage has already been done.

Fight for freedom
In the face of this attack on privacy and the seeding of a surveillance state, individuals with very diverse ideologies who share a commitment to civil liberties have joined together in an unspoken coalition. A number of erstwhile Modi supporters, like the chairman of the Skoch Group Sameer Kochhar who wrote the book ModiNomics, have turned anti-Aadhaar activists.

Libertarians, Left libertarians, Centrist liberals, anybody who is suspicious of excessive state power, ought to be part of this coalition. Demonetisation was a bad idea badly implemented, and the Goods and Services Tax a reasonable idea badly structured and rolled out. Aadhaar as currently conceived has the potential to become something far worse than either of these. It may well be that in a time far in the future when American historians look back on the horrors of Trump’s presidency, Modi’s reign will be remembered in India not for demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax, but for the Frankenstein’s monster that was Aadhaar.

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