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

Friday, February 23, 2018

12858 - Aadhaar hearings: Aadhaar is architecturally unconstitutional, argue the petitioners - First Post

News-Analysis Asheeta Regidi Feb 21, 2018 14:39 PM IST

On Day 11 of the Aadhaar hearings, senior counsel Gopal Subramaniam continued his fundamental argument laid down for the petitioners, that notwithstanding the progress in technology, the Constitution cannot be obfuscated. The main arguments today were on the various issues with the Aadhaar Act, such as excessive delegation, the impact of the use of algorithms in the Aadhaar architecture on the constitutionality of the system, and on how dignity, as a core of the right to privacy, is violated by the Aadhaar system.

Aadhaar Act does not meet tests of reasonableness
For the Aadhaar Act to be constitutional, the petitioners argued that it firstly needs to meet the tests of substantive and procedural reasonableness. To prove the reasonableness of the Aadhaar Act, it must, firstly, have a legitimate aim, one which is discernible not only from the ends of the Act but also the means used by the Act to achieve those ends.

Arguing that Aadhaar fails to meet this test, the use of biometric data, which is in itself flawed, and the use of algorithmic behaviour, which is irrational and outside the control of the authority using it, the UIDAI, was raised. The petitioners argued that when the potential for harm is overwhelming, the standards of scrutiny for the Act enabling the harm must be higher, and Aadhaar does not meet these standards.
To prove further that Aadhaar does not meet this test, the petitioners outlined several flaws with the Aadhaar Act as a whole.

Excessive delegation under the Aadhaar Act
They argued that, firstly, it suffered from excessive delegation. This means that the Aadhaar Act has conferred an excessive amount of rule-making or legislative power, to other authorities. For example, under the Aadhaar Act,  several key processes and definitions have been left to regulation, for instance, the definitions of ‘biometric information’ and ‘demographic information’ under Section 2, enrolment and authentication processes under Sections 2 and 8 respectively, even the procedures for sharing information under Section 23 and publication of an Aadhaar holder’s details under Section 29 have been left to regulation.

Retrospective validation
Further, reiterating an argument raised in previous hearings, the Aadhaar Act, or for that matter, any law, cannot validate the violation of a fundamental right in retrospect.

Aadhaar Act treats data as property
The petitioners had previously argued that the Aadhaar Act treated data as property, and anticipates money-making based on this data. In today’s hearing, they continued the argument, stating that a data protection law operates based on fairness and information sharing principles, criteria which the Aadhaar Act does not satisfy. The Aadhaar Act, they argued, cannot survive in the absence of a data protection law.

Reuters
Preference to virtual person over real person
The petitioners argued that the sole of Aadhaar is continuous authentication. This, they argued, results in a preference to the virtual person over the real person. The ability to negate personhood in this manner, it was argued, causes both a civil and constitutional death of the person. Such a negation of the existential identity of a person through an algorithmic process, without human accountability, and no further access to justice under the Act, is clearly unjust.

The petitioners had also previously argued that this use of algorithms in the Aadhaar system has the effect of ‘disintermediating’ the State, or removing the State as an intermediary for the citizen. This, in turn, erases the accountability of the State. When dealing with constitutional rights, it was argued, the issues involved must be decided by a person, and not an algorithm, and Aadhaar prevents this. Even assuming that we have a benevolent state or a state that operates for the benefit of the people, it cannot be guaranteed that an algorithm which cannot and is not controlled by the State will be similarly benevolent.

Violation of dignity
The petitioners argued that dignity was the golden thread that runs between Articles 14, 19 and 21, and a law that violates this dignity is per se unconstitutional. Several examples of how Aadhaar can violate this dignity were cited. A crucial aspect of this dignity, it was argued, is that the most marginalized section of society should not be exposed as the most marginalized. Further, silos of information on human nature cannot be centrally aggregated. Lastly, the Puttaswamy judgment established the right of a person to control their personality. The surveillance potential of Aadhaar was also reasserted as a restriction on the people.

A person’s existential identity, it was argued, refers to the identity for survival, and this can include transactional identity. Both of these are protected by the Constitution.  This existential identity, as per the petitioners, cannot be ‘judgmentalised’ by the State. The identification of a citizen through a number, they argued, is completely destructive of dignity. The negation of a person’s existential identity, even if by an algorithm, can have far-reaching consequences. Exclusion, in constitutional parlance, is discrimination, and any Act that leads to discrimination, even with the best of intentions, has to go.

The demanding of disclosure of status, it was argued, is against the affirmative duties of the State. The issue of children being required to have an Aadhaar number to get a birth certificate was also raised in this context.

Lastly, it was pointed that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, as per the law, are not capable of being waived. Consent of a person, it was argued, thus has little use if a waiver of constitutional right results and this is particularly when no one can be fully informed of the workings of the algorithm that causes the waiver.

The arguments for the petitioners will continue tomorrow.
Sources of the Arguments: Live Tweeting of the case from the Twitter handles @SFLCin and @prasanna_s

Read our past coverage of the on-going Aadhaar Supreme court hearing:








The author is lawyer and author specialising in technology laws. She is also a certified information privacy professional.


Published Date: Feb 20, 2018 22:17 PM | Updated Date: Feb 21, 2018 14:39 PM