Hello!
There has been a lot of concern from several quarters on the direction the Aadhar card has been taking w.r.t. several important issues. There are already several articles within this website documenting them so will not repeat. This post is to initiate discussion on how FSMK should intervene into this issue. We are a techno-political group and hence it would be good to start from this perspective. The technology behind Aadhar, its security, how is the data collected and stored, problems with duplication and fake registrations, etc
Should be discuss here itself or can we meet in person to take this further? Once we have an understanding among ourselves we can work with other related organisations for effectiveness.
references
See if you can access all EPW articles This link is useful from a technical discussion point of view http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/glaring-errors-in-uidai-rebuttal-epw
https://discuss.fsmk.org/t/iisc-makes-aadhaar-mandatory-for-new-admissions/324/
https://discuss.fsmk.org/t/panel-discussion-on-aadhaar-in-iisc/334/
https://discuss.fsmk.org/t/aadhar-and-privacy/328/
Aadhaar is mandatory, UIDAI writes to all ministries and states - The Economic Times
“In case, there are no existing enrolment facilities nearby, they are required to become UIDAI registrars so that they can set up enrolment facilities themselves," the letter said.
They say that somebody who does not have an UID will not be denied benefit. Rather, they will be immediately enrolled and given benefit. This is totally taking away any chance to opt out and forcing everybody to enroll.
FAQ on the UIDAI site: https://uidai.gov.in/images/aadhaar_question_and_answers.pdf
FSFTN has set up an etherpad at https://pad.riseup.net/p/aadhaar_answers_and_questions to come up with rebuttals for these answers. Please contribute.
Use the following command to get the Supreme Court order dated October 15, 2015 (Writ Petition Civil, Justice K S Puttaswamy & ANR versus Union of India).
curl ‘‘http://courtnic.nic.in/supremecourt/qrydisp.asp’’ --data
‘‘listcause=3-494-2012-2015%2F10%2F15&submit1=Submit’’ >
scorder_oct15_2015.pdf
Quoting from the order:
We will also make it clear that the Aadhaar card Scheme is purely voluntary and it cannot be made mandatory till the matter is finally decided by this Court one way or the other.
What should FSMK do?
Maybe, we should start an online campaign similar to Save the Internet.
That would be a good start… and definitely needed now…
Furthermore, people in such techno-political-social [civil socities] communities, must alteast draw together an alternative ideas. Especially, when bullying is done with technology forming a massive unjust campaign like this…
- Reveal, the quasi-compulsory nature of Aadhar legislation so far to the peers during meeting.
- Reveal, how it immunizes the question of (tech-reliability) practically using IT act, and also contravenes
- Explain what PKI is actually, and it is not what Aadhar is not at all forming, in fact it is inverse implementation of PKI
- Inform the case studies of where centralized citizen databases where stolen ( i cant remember the name of the country)
- Explain about privacy, liberty : clarify the difference between choice of opening up the privacy versus mandating to opening up. Explain the difference between numbering a citizen versus identifying a citizen.
- Explain why we currently needed a privacy legislation/law in a democracy/republic nation, (even if it feels shittier)
- Explain how it uses it quasi-compulsory tactics on working group, students, BPL people – to exchange their private information (biometric) for subsistence
- Refer Usha Ramanathan videos, colonel Mathew videos @ IISC, Jean dreze, eben moglen docs on aadhaar.
- Explain how Aadhar depends upon non reliable network infrastructure ( unstable power supply, unstable internet connection, its False negative index rate), people being enrolled as a transaction for being a citizen to claim the services offered by PDS. Explain how it still can become corrupted - like operators, agencies,banks can create fake aadhar numbers,etc …
- Address, that so far, no source code, on any part of aadhar isntrumentation chain (it claims that it will use open source tech. wherever possible) has been referred or shared…
- Expalin No-OPT OUT, No-Priori information be requested from the citizen when ordered by judge / secretary generally - direcly taken from CIDR.
- Dont forget to discuss in Privacy/Security; economy; social; technology perspectives equally. Otherwise lot of motivational reasoning and unfair stones would be thrown at the issue - may make the discussion moot.