283 - 734 - Constitutional, Legal, Historical & technological Reasons Against UID // Aadhar Scheme- by Gopal Krishna

To
Shri Anant Gangaram Geete
Chairperson & Members
Parliamentary Petitions Committee
New Delhi

Through
Shri Hulasi Ram,
Deputy Secretary
Parliamentary Petitions Committee

Subject-Constitutional, Legal, Historical & Technological Reasons Against UID//Aadhaar Scheme

Sir,

This is to draw your attention towards the structural basis being laid out for future authoritarianism by providing a unique identification (UID) number to all the Indian citizens. It is claimed that this UID “scheme shall ensure that various development deliverables reach the poor and needy in time, shall enable better monitoring and help plug leakages.” This claim of chairperson of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is suspect.

The fact is becoming clearer that UID scheme is a naked declaration of war on civil liberties and natural resources like land. Nanadan Nilekani, chairperson, UIDAI refers to Hernando de Sotto's book 'The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else' to argue that national ID system would be a big step for land markets to facilitate right to property and undoing of abolition of right to property in 1978 in order to bring down poverty!

Among many questions that have emerged, one is: Has Nilekani, the Cabinet Minister taken the oath on constitution to abide by its provisions? While he is mutilating the rights of citizens and right to information, PDS, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act etc through his marketing gimmicks about the wonders of UID scheme, the fact is that even Mahatma Gandhi opposed a law similar to UID as a Black Act in South Africa from 1906 to 1914 saying,"...I have never known legislation of this nature being directed against free men in any part of the world. I know that indentured Indians in Natal are subject to a drastic system of passes, but these poor fellows can hardly be classed as free men" and "...giving of finger prints, required by the Ordinance, was quite a novelty in South Africa. With a view to seeing some literature on the subject, I read a volume on finger impressions by Mr. Henry, a police officer, from which I gathered that finger prints were required by law only from criminals.”

In August 1906 the Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance became law in the Transvaal. Any Indian who did not register by a certain date would no longer be allowed to stay in the Transvaal. This law stated that every Indian man, woman or child older than 8 years must register with a government official called the registrar of Asiatics. This registrar was to also take the fingerprints of the people he registered and issue them with registration certificates, which they had to show to any policeman who asked to see them. Notably, UID scheme too is based on biometric data like finger prints and iris scan.

In the face of such fascist attack on citizen's sovereignty, a statement has been issued by eminent citizens like Justice VR Krishna Iyer, Retired Judge, Supreme Court of India, Prof Romila Thapar, Historian, K.G.Kannabiran, Senior Civil Liberties Lawyer, Kavita Srivastava, PUCL and Right to Food Campaign, Aruna Roy, MKKS, Rajasthan, Nikhil Dey, MKKS, Rajasthan, S.R.Sankaran, Retired Secretary, Government of India, Upendra Baxi, Jurist and ex-Vice Chancellor of Universities of Surat and Delhi, Uma Chakravarthi, Historian, Shohini Ghosh, Teacher and Film Maker, Amar Kanwar, Film Maker, Bezwada Wilson, Safai Karamchari Andolan, Trilochan Sastry, IIMB, and Association for Democratic Reforms, Prof. Jagdish Chhokar, ex- IIMA, and Association for Democratic Rights, Shabnam Hashmi, ANHAD, Justice A.P.Shah, Retired Chief Justice of High Court of Delhi and Deep Joshi, Independent Consultant.

This statement has been endorsed by educationists like Prof. Anil Sadgopal as well. The statement expresses great concern especially for those working on issues of food security, NREGA, migration, technology, decentralisation, constitutionalism, civil liberties and human rights. The process of setting up the Authority has resulted in very little, if any, discussion about this project and its effects and fallout. The documents on the UIDAI website, and a recent draft law (the National Identification Authority Bill, which is also on the website) do not provide answers to the many questions that are being raised in the public domain. This project is intended to collect demographic data about all residents in the country. It is said that it will impact on the PDS and NREGA programmes, and plug leakages and save the government large sums of money. It would, however, seem that even basic procedures have not been followed before launching on such a massive project.

Before it goes any further, we consider it imperative that the following be done:
• Do a feasibility study: There are claims made in relation to the project, about what it can do for PDS and NREGA, for instance, which does not reflect any understanding of the situation of the situation on the ground. The project documents do not say what other effects the project may have, including its potential to be intrusive and violative of privacy, who may handle the data (there will be multiple persons involved in entering, maintaining and using the data), who may be able to have access to the data and similar other questions.
• Do a cost: benefit analysis: It is reported that the UIDAI estimates the project will costs Rs 45,000 crores to the exchequer in the next 4 years. This does not seem to include the costs that will be incurred by Registrars, Enrollers, internal systems costs that the PDs system will have to budget if it is to be able to use the UID, the estimated cost to the end user and to the number holder.
• In a system such as this, a mere statement that the UIDAI will deal with the security of the data is obviously insufficient. How does the UIDAI propose to deal with data theft? If this security cannot be reasonably guaranteed, the wisdom of holding such data in a central registry may need to be reviewed.
• The involvement of firms such as Ernst & Young and Accenture raise further questions about who will have access to the data, and what that means to the people of India.
• Constitutionality of this project, including in the matter of privacy, the relationship between the state and the people, security and other fundamental rights.
Questions have been raised which have not been addressed so far, including those about –
• Undemocratic process: UIDAI was set-up via a GoI notification as an attached office of the Planning Commission without any discussion or debate in the Parliament or civil society. In the year and a half of its inception, the Authority has signed MoUs with virtually all states and UTs, LIC, Petroleum Ministry and many banks. In July, the Authority circulated the draft NIA Bill (to achieve statutory status); the window for public feedback was two weeks. Despite widespread feedback and calls for making all feedback public, the Authority has not made feedback available. Further in direct contravention to the process of public feedback, the NIA Bill was listed for introduction in the Lok Sabha 2010 monsoon session
• Privacy (It is only now that the DoPT is said to be working on a draft of a privacy law, but nothing is out for discussion even yet)
• Surveillance: where this technology, and the existence of the UID number, and its working, could result in increasing the potential for surveillance
• Profiling
• Tracking
• Convergence, by which those with access to state power, as well as companies, could collate information about each individual with the help of the UID number.

National IDs have been abandoned in the US, Australia and the newly-elected British government. The reasons have predominantly been: costs and privacy. If it is too expensive for the US with a population of 308 million, and the UK with 61 million people, and Australia with 21 million people, it is being asked why India thinks it can prioritise its spending in this direction. In the UK, the Home Secretary explained that they were abandoning the project because it would otherwise be `intrusive bullying’ by the state, and that the government intended to be the `servant’ of the people, and not their `master’. Is there a lesson in it for us?

In the late nineties, the Supreme Court of Philippines struck down the President’s Executive Order A.O 308 which instituted a biometric based national ID system calling it unconstitutional on two grounds – the overreach of the executive over the legislative powers of the congress and invasion of privacy. The same is applicable in India – UIDAI has been constituted on the basis of a GoI notification and there is a fundamental risk to civil liberties with the convergence of UID, National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), National Population Register, National DNA Database etc.

The UIDAI is still at the stage of conducting pilot studies. The biometric pilot study has reportedly already thrown up problems especially among the poor whose fingerprints are not stable, and whose iris scans suffer from malnourishment related cataract and among whom the incidence of corneal scars is often found. The project is clearly still in its inception. The project should be halted before it goes any further and the prelude to the project be attended to, the public informed and consulted, and the wisdom of the project determined. The Draft Bill too needs to be publicly debated. This is a project that could change the status of the people in this country, with effects on our security and constitutional rights, and a consideration of all aspects of the project should be undertaken with this in mind.

Unmindful of massive opposition by citizens, the Union Cabinet cleared the introduction of the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010 in Parliament on 24th September. This happened in a tearing hurry even as the NAC was examining the UID proposal. This was uncalled for and it provides robust grounds for scrutiny.

Not only that fearing the outcome of the NAC deliberations and its inferences, Nandan Nilekani avoided NAC to escape having to answer the questions about UID on 30th August, 2010. It appears that the chairperson of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has roped in Prime Minister to help him wriggle out by launching UID on 29th September in Maharashtra in order to present a fait accompli of sort to the NAC. In such circumstances, it is indeed a relief to know that the NAC is opposed to UID//Aadhar project.

It is quite sad that both the Cabinet Committee on UIDAI Authority and PM’s Council are in such a great awe of a regressive idea that so far it has failed to examine the reasons of governments of US, Australia and UK to scrap similar projects. So much so that even as the Bill will be introduced in the Indian Parliament, the British Parliament will be scrapping it because the democratic mandate of UK citizens and all the democracies is against such an invasive project.

One Noble Prize winner too has underlined how it raises questions of personal liberty. Other world renowned social scientists have termed it as akin to allotting “prisoner numbers” to citizens. This is quite worrisome that in such a context our political leaders in general are so frozen in their passivity that they are not reaching out to sincerely address and respond to the gnawing concerns about a project that have fascist roots.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) reminds one of what happened from the period preceding Adolf Hitler's arrival to January 1933 when he occupied power, to Second World War and since then and International Business Machines (IBM)’s role with its punch card and card sorting technology. The way UID project is being bulldozed in the name of PDS, Education, Public Health, NREGA and now migrant workers is highly dubious.

Unique Identity (UID) Number is a rare project which has unleashed the concept of massively organised information as means of social control, a weapon of war, and for the victimisation of ethnic groups, minorities and political adversaries. It appears that Nilekani, the co-founder and former chief executive of Infosys Technologies Ltd, India's second largest software company, has misled the key functionaries of Government of India into believing that he is deeply concerned about reaching the poorest of the poor with a 16-digit card (4 numbers are hidden?) to liberate them from poverty.

This proposed UID legislation authorizes the creation of a centralized database of unique identification numbers that will be issued to every resident of India but has failed to provide for provisions that precludes abuse of such a database for invading citizens’ rights to privacy and freedom of choice by national and transnational corporations like Vedanta and IBM. The legislation poses one of gravest threat imaginable as far as citizens’ right is concerned. It will damage citizens’ sovereignty beyond repair and has the potential to cause holocaust like situation in future through profiling of minorities, political opponents and ethnic groups.

UID/Aadhar project gives a sense of déjà vu. It is the same path which IBM (International Business Machines), the world's largest technology company and the second most valuable global brand traversed for targeted asset confiscation, ghettoisation, deportation, and ultimately extermination with its punch card and card sorting system -- a precursor to the computer – that made the automation of human destruction possible. This is a matter of historical fact and not an opinion. Indeed in the words of historian Benedetto Croce, "All history is contemporary history" and the lessons from history present a compelling reason against the UID/Aadhar project.

Therefore, we support the statement of eminent citizens asking that:

• The project be halted

• A feasibility study be done covering all aspects of this issue

• Experts be tasked with studying its constitutionality

• The law on privacy be urgently worked on (this will affect matters way beyond the UID project)
• A cost : benefit analysis be done

• A public, informed debate be conducted before any such major change be brought in.

We urge you to recommend and encourage the government to abandon the UID/Aadhar project like the governments of UK, Australia and US have done to safeguard and honour the non-negotiable rights of citizens.


Yours Sincerely
Gopal Krishna
Member
Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL)
New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660
E-mail: krishna2777@gmail.com

Cc
Members of the Parliamentary Petitions Committee
1 Shri Anant Gangaram Geete
2 Shri Rajendra Agrawal
3 Shri Khiladi Lal Bairwa
4 Shri E. T. Mohammed Basheer
5 Shri N.S.V.Chitthan
6 Shri Gurudas Dasgupta
7 Shri Dip Gogoi
8 Shri Devendra Nagpal
9 Shri Jagdambika Pal
10 Prof. Ram Shankar
11 Shri Sathyanarayana Sarvey
12 Shri Rakesh Singh
13 Dr. Sanjay Sinh
14 Shri Kabir Suman
15 Shri Joseph Toppo

Shri Basudev Acharya, Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha

Shri Satish Chandra Misra,Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Smt Shobhana Bhartia, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

H K Dua, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Shri Jabir Husain, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Smt. Brinda Karat,Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Shri K.E. Ismail, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Shri Lalhming Liana, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Shri O.T. Lepcha, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Dr. Chandan Mitra, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Shri M. Rajasekara Murthy, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Dr. Barun Mukherji, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Prof. Ram Gopal Yadav, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Mohammad Amin, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Shri Ram Vilas Paswan, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Posted by Gopal Krishna at 10:26 PM 

221 - UID is against basic human values - Media Vigil

Mediavigil believes that without democratisation of communication and the right to communicate, the freedom of expression is meaningless. It attempts to take note of environment and public health issues where governments and corporations provide sanitised information. It also keeps track of ecology and health issues. To know more about it, visit :www.toxicswatch.com, toxicswatch.blogspot.com, banasbestosindia.blogspot.com
__________________________________________

Friday, September 24, 2010

UID is Against Basic Human Values

Note: Apropos a piece "A unique liberal dilemma", after the last UK elections, its clear that the campaign for citizens' sovereignty in India directed against the UID project (Aadhar or Niraadhar) is most representative of the majority of Indians across all classes. In a December 2008 paper of Population Council, New Delhi, it is estimated that 258 million adults in India are migrants, of which the majority are men migrating for employment. While there is an existing Inter-state Migrant Workmen Act,1979 and there is a Supreme Court judgement delivered in July, 1990 in a writ petition involving migrant workers to the effect that "every State/Union Territory in India shall be obliged to permit officers of the originating State of the migrant labour for holding proper inquiries within the limits of the recipient States for enforcement of the Act and no recipient State shall place any embargo or hindrance in such process", the same has not been implemented. Has any newspaper raised this issue? How does UID play any role in this?

Citing migrant workers to justify UID appears to be an exercise in sophistry. The National Commission on Rural Labour, which submitted its report in 1991, studied the problem of inter-State migrant workmen in depth. This commission recommended third parties to file complaints to protect workers, ensure the liability of contractors and principal employers, setting up of Special Courts and changing the migration policy to reduce exploitation. Has any financial newspaper in particular deputed its reporters and editors to pursue it?.

The most vulnerable and exploited migrant workers of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa who work in Alang, Bhavnagar, Gujarat in a Guatanamo bay like condition akin to slaves with no rights. Their rights needs to be protected my genuine measures and not by fake initiatives like UID scheme. When The Financial Express took an editorial position to market Nandan Nilekani's Image of India and his conception of identity of Indian citizens, M K Venu, the Managing Editor looked like a writer of a paid feature (advertorial). It does not engage with the issues raised by the majority of Indians who are as skeptical of UID as most political parties are of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM)which has been declared unconstitutional in Germany, scrapped in Ireland and many other countries. Notably, "Security Analysis of India's Electronic Voting Machines" a research paper to be presented in October, 2010 at the ACM Computer and Communications Security conference led to the arrest of Hari Prasad, the co-author of the paper although some 16 political parties representing almost half of the Indian parliament have expressed serious concerns about the use of electronic voting amidst intriguing silence by those who support UID project. It appears that somehow the mindset that promotes unquestioned use of EVM with a touching faith in likes of Nilekani is the same mindset that promotes UID project with astounding concerns for those Below Poverty Line and the migrant workers.

Venu quotes Isaiah Berlin, a British philosopher and his concept of liberty implicitly underlining that UID does entail the issue of civil liberties. Did this newspaper ever take a position for migrant workers who face apartheid by local state governments and callousness from central government? The editor of this financial paper has failed examine why UK has abandoned a similar UID project because of massive and unprecedented people's opposition. Had Isaiah Berlin been alive (he died in 1997)he would have supported his fellow British citizens in rejecting the party and the government that "oversold the advantages of identity cards" like Nilekani and his acolytes are doing. In UK, during the 2010 General Election campaign, the published manifestos of the various parties revealed that the Labour Party planned to continue the introduction of the identity card scheme, while all other parties pledged to discontinue plans to issue ID cards. The Conservative party also explicitly pledged to scrap the National Identity Register.

In the Conservative Party – Liberal Democrat Party Coalition Agreement that followed the 2010 General Election, the new UK government announced that they planned to scrap the ID card scheme, including the National Identity Register (akin to our National Population Register) as part of their measures 'to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.'

In May 2010, the new UK government announced that the scrapping of the identity card scheme which would save approximately £86 million over the following 4 years, and avoid a further £800 million in maintenance costs over the decade which were to have been recovered through fees. Indian government will also save millions like UK did by scrapping Nilekani's idea and accepting the opinion of majority of Indians who reject Nilekani's allergy with citizens being sovereigns because it comes in the way of a toxic notion of industrial development. Isaiah Berlin had rightly said, "All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate." UID project denies those non-negotiable values and is being marketed like a commercial commodity.

Gopal Krishna
________________________________________

UID is an Identity Crisis in the Making
USHA RAMANATHAN

AN EXERCISE is currently underway to enter every resident in India on a database. In a few years, the unique identification (UID) is intended to become a ubiquitous number, to be used in many operations: enrolling in a school, maintaining a bank account, ticketing for travel, seeking treatment in a hospital and having one’s death recorded in a mortuary register.

The sales pitch for the UID is, like most advertisements, intended to mislead. Enrolment is said to be voluntary. But, and as is now acknowledged, other agencies may refuse to provide a service if an individual is not enrolled, making it compulsory. The Working Paper of the UID Authority of India (UIDAI), which has been the basis of many discussions, starts with a claim that the UID will bring down barriers that prevent the poor from accessing services; but quickly adds: “UID will only guarantee identity, not rights, benefits and entitlements.”

The Public Distribution System (PDS) is the moral fulcrum on which the UID poises itself. Yet, the UIDAI admits to its interest in PDS being closely linked with completing its enrolment targets. Listing the ‘benefits to the UID’ that can flow to it from PDS: “The ration card is today the most prevalent form of identity in rural areas. If the UID enrolment is integrated into the process of the creation of a beneficiary database for PDS, the coverage of UID will improve significantly.” This is such a giveaway.

As with banks, those who have no documents to vouch for them would face exclusion

The potential that the number may have to enable tracking, profiling, mounting surveillance and ‘convergence’ of information, which will aid market profiling, is being studiously ignored. There are deeply disconcerting facts about the project that should wake up even those dwelling in the slumber of denial.

There has been no feasibility study preceding the setting up of such a pervasive project. There has been no cost-benefit analysis of the project. All calculations are of the back-of-theenvelope variety. Data theft is a serious threat. But other than asking us to leave it to the experts, there is nothing more that we know before we give information to the UIDAI. We have as yet no law relating to privacy.

The infallibility of biometrics, including fingerprints and iris scan, is still being tested: evidence has begun to emerge that callused hands, corneal scars and cataract induced by malnourishment may leave many millions outside this pattern of identification. Even as enrolment is poised to begin, authentication is still an unstudied field.

The promise of inclusiveness is belied by the ‘approved’ introducers; that is, where the poor are unable to provide any supporting documents to prove their identity, a network of approved introducers are to “introduce and vouch for the validity of a resident’s information”. UIDAI’s website admits this idea has been borrowed from the account opening procedure in commercial banks.

So, as with banks, those who have no documents to vouch for them would be threatened with exclusion. Where being a legal resident is to be closely tied in with having a UID number, it could render the poor vulnerable to having the legitimacy of their staying in the country being placed in the shadowy terrain of illegality and exclusion.

In an interview telecast on 14 August, UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani explained: “I think the core thing will be our ability to show that it is beneficial for people to have this number. If our ‘customer’, the resident of India, sees value in this number, if he sees that possessing it will bring in a material change in his life, he will come and take it. If he doesn’t do that, then we have lost what seems to be a marketing battle.” The State may have some explaining to do.

uramanathan@ielrc.org

The author is an independent law researcher
Posted by Gopal Krishna at 12:09 PM

79 - Open Letter to Fellow Citizens Against Unique Identification Number & National Population Register By Gopala Krishna - Source - Media Vigil

MEDIAVIGIL

Mediavigil believes that without democratisation of communication and the right to communicate, the freedom of expression is meaningless.It attempts to take note of environment and public health issues where governments and corporations provide sanitised information. It also keeps track of ecology and health issues. To know more about it, visit :www.toxicswatch.com, toxicswatch.blogspot.com, banasbestosindia.blogspot.com

Tuesday, June 01, 2010



Open Letter to Fellow Citizens Against Unique Identification Number & National Population Registerhttp://mediavigil.blogspot.com/

Dear Fellow Citizens,

Subject- Scrap Unique Identification Number (UID)/ Aadhar project involving biometric data collection linked to National Population Register (NPR)
Dear fellow citizens,

This is with reference to a privacy invasion project which is relevant to India and all the democratic countries of the world. The very first Bill that is to be presented by the new coalition government of UK in the British Parliament is to repeal its Identity Cards Act 2006 even as Government of India has chosen to give approval to Unique Identification Number (UID) project that threatens citizens’ privacy. Clearly, what is poisonous for civil liberties in UK cannot become non-poisonous in India.

If one takes cognizance of the claim that “UID system is a civilian application of biometrics”1 and compares it with current practices, one finds that such a claim is quite misplaced. In the report there is reference to a Study commissioned by the US Department of Homeland Security to International Biometrics Group.2 Will someone explain how manifest reference to such a study constitutes civilian application?

In our country, it is rarely noticed as to when the concept of massively organized information quietly emerged to become a means of social control, a weapon of war, and for the victimization of ethnic groups. Co-founder and former chief executive of Infosys Technologies Ltd, India’s second largest software company, Nandan Nilekani has misled the Government of India into making it believe that in a country with 48% illiteracy, a 12-digit card would be helpful in reaching the poorest of the poor.

Unique Identification Number (UID)/‘Aadhar' project that emerged from the constitution of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in January, 2009 reminds one of what happened from the period preceding Adolf Hitler’s arrival to January, 1933 when he occupied power, to Second World War and since then. The way International Business Machines (IBM), the world's largest technology company and the second most valuable global brand colluded with the Nazis to identify Jews for targeted asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and ultimately extermination to help Hitler with its punch card and card sorting system--a precursor to the computer made the automation of human destruction possible is matter of historical fact.3

Unmindful of the lessons from Germany in particular and Europe in general, advancing the argument of targeting, it has been claimed on the floor of the parliament by the Indian Finance Minister while presenting the 2010-11 Union Budget that UID project ‘would provide an effective platform for financial inclusion and targeted subsidy payments,’4 the same targeting measures can be used with vindictive motives against citizens of certain religion, caste and ethnicity or region or towards a section of society due to economic resentment. Curiously, the Finance Minister and the head of Unique Identification Number (UID)/ Aadhar project refer to financial inclusion and not about economic inclusion of the poor. Exclusion of certain sections of society for political reasons had led to the targeted massacre of 1947, 1984 and 2002 in India. If an exhaustive trans-disciplinary study is conducted it would reveal how privacy is closely connected to data protection and the same was readily available to perpetrators of the riots, massacres and genocide in our country.

Unique Identification Number (UID)/ ‘Aadhar' project is going to do almost exactly the same thing which the predecessors of Hitler did else how is it that Germany always had the lists of Jewish names even prior to the arrival of Nazis. The Nazis got these lists with the help of IBM technology company which was in ‘Census’ business that included racial census that entailed not only count the Jews but also identifying them. In Washington at the United States Holocaust Museum, there is an exhibit of an IBM Hollerith D-11 card sorting machine that was responsible for organizing the census of 1933 that first identified the Jews. Government of India cannot guarantee that in future when the Nazis or some such sort come to power in India they would not have access to Unique Identification Number (UID) for vindictive measures against certain sections of the citizenry. This is evidently the journey of ‘identification’ efforts from January 1933 to January 2009 when the Unique Identification Number (UID) Authority was announced.

Unique Identification Number and National Population Register is all set to do what International Business Machines (IBM) did in Germany, Romania and in Europe and elsewhere through ‘solutions’ ranging from the census to providing list of names of Jews to Nazis. The Unique Identification Number and National Populations Register have nothing to do with citizenship, it is merely an identification exercise.

In such a backdrop, as concerned citizens, we welcome the progressive step by the new coalition government in UK to scrap its controversial national identity card (ID) scheme in order to safeguard citizens’ privacy and act against intrusions. The scrapping of the UK’s ID project is planned to be done in the next 3-4 months. Besides repealing Identity Cards Act 2006 and outlawing the finger-printing of children at school, UK government would stop its National Identity Register and the next generation of biometric passports, the Contact Point database and end storage of Internet and email records.

But unlike UK, Government of India through a Press Information Bureau release dated 18 May, 2010 has stated that “The Cabinet Committee on Unique Identification Authority of India related issues (CC-UIDAI) today approved in principle the adoption of the approach outlined by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for collection of demographic and biometric attributes of residents (face, all ten fingerprints and iris) for the UID project. It was also decided to include data of the iris for children in the age group of 5 to 15 years. The same standards and processes would be adhered to by the Registrar General of India for the National Population Register (NPR) exercise and all other Registrars in the UID system.” Not surprisingly, the government is feigning ignorance about the democratic movement against such efforts. In India too, there is a robust case against rejecting what has been rejected in the UK. Unique Identification Number (UID)/ Aadhar project is a blatant case of infringement of civil liberties. Government’s identification exercise follows the path of The Information Technology Act, 2000 that was enacted in the absence of no data or privacy protection legislation.

As is the case with Unique Identification Number (UID)/ Aadhar project, in UK too the scheme has been vacillating from one claimed purpose to another. The project is being bulldozed in the name of poor by saying, “Identity becomes a bottleneck if one wants to have a ration card, driving licence, passport, bank account or a mobile connection. It will enable poor residents to access multiple resources including education, health and financial services.” Following the footprints of UK’s discredited project, it is being said that “The identity number will help get a child admission in school.”5 Perhaps fearing abandonment of the project, in the aftermath of UK government’s decision, it is being now said that the Unique Identification Number is optional not mandatory.6

How is it that two democracies deal with the issue of ungovernable breaches of privacy differently? While UK government is pro-active in protecting privacy of its citizens, Government of India is ridiculing the very idea of privacy and civil liberties.

It is highly disturbing that at almost the same time India’s minority coalition government plans to do just the contrary with astounding disregard to citizens’ privacy by stamping them with an UID number based on their biometric data. Such “surveillance” effort through world’s largest citizen identity project for “Creating a Unique Identity Number for Every Resident in India” in history undermines our democracy beyond repair.

Related to the UID number project is the project of National Population Register (NPR). This is for the first time that NPR is being prepared. The database will be built by the Registrar General, India. It is noteworthy that census and NPR are different. Census is the biggest source of data on demography, literacy and education, housing and household amenities, economic activity, urbanization, fertility, mortality, language, religion and migration. It serves as primary data for planning and the implementation of policies of the Central and State Governments.

National Population Register (NPR) involves the creation of a comprehensive identity database for the country. NPR will include the items of information such as the name of the person, father’s name, mother’s name, spouse’s name, sex, date of birth, place of birth, current marital status, education, nationality as declared, occupation, present address of usual resident and permanent residential address. The database will also contain photograph and finger biometry of persons above the age of 15 years.

After the National Population Register (NPR) database is finalized, the next task would be assigning every individual a Unique Identification Number (UID). This UID number will be added to the NPR database. It is proposed to issue identity card, which will be a smart card with UID number printed on it and include basic details like name, mother’s/father’s name, sex, date and place of birth, photograph. Complete details will be stored in the chip.

Like in the UK, in India too, there is a need for a similar measure to stop the efforts underway through the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to issue a unique identification number to every resident in the country.i Issuing unique identity numbers to the 1.2 billion residents in India based on biometric data is fraught with hitherto unimaginable dangers of human rights violations. It has emerged that it all started rolling in the aftermath of a meeting of the Empowered Group of Ministers on November 4, 2008 and a meeting of the Prime Minister's Council of the UID Authority on August 12, 2009, wherein it was decided that there was a “need for a legislative framework” akin to UK’s Identity Cards Act 2006 which is now being scrapped.

The 13th Finance Commission has made a provision for an incentive of Rs 100 per person (Rs 400-500 per family) to bribe citizens below the poverty line to register for the UID and has recommended a grant of Rs 2,989.10 crore to be given to the state governments for the same. The three states who have signed an MOU on their part have set up state level committees to work as registrars of UIDAI for collecting biometric samples like thumb impression or cornea configuration of each individual resident. The Karnataka government has set-up the Center for e-Governance and a state-level UID implementation committee under the chief secretary; Madhya Pradesh has set-up a cabinet committee on UID under the chief minister and a state UID implementation committee under the chief secretary. The Andhra government too has set-up a state level empowered committee under the chief minister and state UID implementation committee under the chief secretary. Has there been any debate so far in the legislatures about the ramifications of a project which is all set to be scrapped in UK?

As per Authority’s Office Memorandumii signed by Director General, UIDAI dated September 29, 2009, “The main objective is to improve benefits service delivery, especially to the poor and the marginalized sections of the society. To deliver its mandate, the UID Authority proposes to create a platform to first collect the identity details and then to perform authentication that can be used by several government and private service providers.”7 The reference to “private service providers” is inexplicable for the work is meant to be an exercise for public purpose and for the poor and the marginalized. The promise of service delivery to the poor and the marginalized hides how it will enable access to profit for the IT industry and the biometrics industry. Such claims are quite insincere, misleading, factually incorrect. It reminds one of the pledges in the preamble of the Constitution of India, it will have us believe that UID Authority would fulfill the constitutional promise of economic equality. Such objectives are bad sophistry at best.

This Authority in turn set up a Biometrics Standards Committee in order “to review existing standards and modify/extend/enhance them so as to achieve the goals and purpose for de-duplications and authentication” through framing biometrics standards for fingerprints, face and iris.

The Authority defines Biometrics as “the science of establishing the identity of an individual based on the physical, chemical or behavioural attributes of the person.” Besides the photos of the face are commonly used in various types of identification cards, it is undertaking the use of fingerprints for identification and recording Iris, the annular region of the eye, bounded by the pupil and sclera on either side which is considered the most accurate biometric.iii

The committee reveals that “The biometrics will be captured for authentication by government departments and commercial organizations at the time of service delivery.”8 The commercial organization mentioned herein is not defined.

The Biometrics Standards Committee refers to previous experiences of the US and Europe with biometrics. A technical sub-group was also formed that collected over 250,000 fingerprint images from 25,000 persons were sourced from districts of Delhi, UP, Bihar and Orissa for analyzing Indian fingerprints. It may do the same for Iris and face as well to form a database size of 1.2 billion. It has been recommended that “Biometrics data are national assets and must be preserved in their original quality.”9 The Committee refers to citizens database as national asset. Are’t citizens assets in themselves whose civil liberties gives legitimacy to the every existence of nation-state.

Both Unique Identification Number and National Population Register through convergence represent a case of the state, and the ‘market’ tracking citizens for one reason or the other. It is neither benign in its design nor in its execution. The working paper of the UIDAI revealed that the “UID number will only guarantee identity, not rights, benefits or entitlements”. It is also said that it would not even guarantee identity, it would only provide ‘aid’ in identification.

We support the campaign of the people’ movements, mass organizations, institutions and concerned citizens and individuals who strongly oppose the potential tracking and profiling based techno-governance tools such as the Unique Identification number. We demand that Parliament or the Comptroller and Auditor General should probe the UID Authority’s work from January 2009 till date.

In view of the above mentioned facts, we submit that the collection of such data is a classic case of gross violation of fundamental human rights. Government of India should take prompt lessons from the UK government’s decision to scrap its National ID project and desist from taking the path paved by IBM for holocaust and abandon its Unique Identification Number (UID)/ Aadhar project.

Yours faithfully
Gopal Krishna
Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties
New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660,
E-mail: krishna2777@gmail.com

*Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties is an initiative of the MediaVigil which is working since March 2004 . It is a collective of media practitioners, researchers and activists.
Blog: mediavigil.blogspot.com
Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mediavigil/

Posted by Gopal Krishna at 2:18 AM 0 comments