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, December 14, 2017

12499 - Indian Govt postpones linking bank accounts to digital ID - Asia Times

The announcement on December 12 reverses the requirement for Indians to link their bank accounts to the Aadhaar system. Photo: AFP

A day before the case came up in the Supreme Court, the government postponed the linking of the Aadhaar digital identity scheme to bank accounts

By SAIKAT DATTA DECEMBER 13, 2017 8:17 PM (UTC+8

A public outcry has forced the Indian government to delay plans to roll out a digital identity program on every citizen, linking bank accounts and other financial data.

The mandatory linking of the controversial Aadhaar system with bank accounts and mutual funds has been postponed, according to an announcement issued on December 12 by the Department of Revenue under the Ministry of Finance.

The announcement stated that a new date will be announced later. However, adding to the confusion, the Ministry of Finance issued a press release stating that bank accounts have to be linked by March 31, 2018. It is not clear if this rule applies only to new accounts or existing ones as well.

The Aadhaar project has become one of the most controversial issues in India, raising massive concerns about the government’s ability to carry out surveillance of citizens. While it was started as a “welfare” project to ensure better targeted deliveries of government subsidies, it was essentially a surveillance tool, predicated on the ability to track citizens and profile them.The notification by the federal government came just a day ahead of a hearing in the Supreme Court, challenging the mandatory linking of the digital identity system to bank accounts and other financial products. On June 1, the government of India had issued a notification modifying the Prevention of Money laundering Act (PMLA) mandating that all citizens link their unique digital identity number, also known as Aadhaar, to their bank accounts. A similar order has been issued by the Department of Telecommunications asking citizens to link their Aadhaar number to cell phone numbers.

Avoiding Judicial Scrutiny?
“One thing is clear. The hearing was slated to start from tomorrow and the government doesn’t want the court to look into this. That explains this last minute notification postponing the bank linking indefinitely,” Dr Usha Ramanathan, a legal researcher and one of the country’s biggest privacy advocates, told Asia Times. Ramanathan has been spearheading the move to scrap the Aadhaar project for over seven years and was instrumental in pointing out the various flaws in the project.
Pune-based Dr Anupam Saraph, a noted expert and designer of complex system has been another campaigner who has repeatedly raised concerns about the project over the last year. “The June 1 notification asking citizens to link their bank accounts was clearly illegal since the PMLA has no legal basis to freeze accounts of citizens. The government was aware of this and wanted to scare people into linking their accounts before the case came up for hearing,” he told Asia Times.

Reliable government sources said there was considerable concern over a “backlash from the public” if their bank accounts were frozen after December 31. Officials were worried that if the deadline was not postponed, many citizens would be denied access to their savings, which could lead to financial chaos.

The Indian Government issued a notification on December 12, 2017 postponing the mandatory linking of bank accounts to the Aadhaar number.

Worried over the growing implications of the project, the Supreme Court was asked earlier this year to also examine whether privacy is a fundamental right. A rare, nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that privacy is a fundamental right as enshrined in various clauses of the Constitution. “It has been four months since the landmark privacy judgment came out. The government has not done anything and was possibly waiting for the last minute, so that more people signed up, before issuing this notification,” Ramanathan said.

Ironically, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had issued a press release last week stating that the linking was mandatory. The press release was issued in response to a viral video by a lawyer, Aishwarya Bhati, who had pointed out that the linking could not be mandatory since the interim orders of the Supreme Court had specifically mandated it to be used for a few welfare schemes. While UIDAI argued that the law had overtaken the judgment, skeptics like Saraph are not convinced. “If the circumstances have changed, then the UIDAI should have gone to court and sought a clarification. Why did they push it through by threatening citizens?”

A Surveillance Regime
Started by the Congress-led UPA government nearly eight years ago, the plan had seen massive opposition from the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). During that phase, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, publicly tweeted that he had met up with the Aadhaar team and expressed his concerns about the security of sensitive personal data. The team was unable to come up with convincing answers to his queries.

However, some time between the meeting and his election as Prime Minister in May 2014, Modi seems to have had a change of heart about the project. It was revealed that Modi, as the Chief Minister had not only required that his state join the project, but also collected data that was not even mandated by the project.

As the BJP-led NDA government took over in May 2014, many had hoped for a roll back of the project. However, the government went ahead and began to promote the project by virtually threatening citizens with disruption of basic services, such as the ability to file income taxes.

Earlier, petitioners to the Supreme Court had challenged the project, by pointing out the massive potential for misuse. As a German diplomat posted in India recently told this correspondent: “Such a scheme is prohibited by law in Germany. We have seen how such a database of citizens’ data can be misused and German law explicitly prohibits it.”
The Supreme Court passed two interim orders. One prohibited the government from expanding the scope of the project while the other specified particular welfare schemes where the project could be deployed. But the Modi government pushed through a ‘Money Bill’ in Parliament in 2016, and did not allow the Opposition an opportunity to block it. It has also  failed to deliver welfare schemes in a targeted manner and has instead excluded thousands of people from marginalized communities from getting their mandatory benefits.

The move ensured that concerns expressed by law makers were not taken into consideration and the government managed to push through the law, enabling surveillance clauses on the grounds of “national security.” This gives the government unfettered access to sensitive personal data for profiling citizens. Due to the lack of privacy laws, this opens up citizens to manipulations by the government, that undermines democratic principles enshrined by the Constitution of India.