That includes not making insinuations about astroturfing and shills, unless you have evidence. Somebody merely disagreeing with you does not count as evidence.
But in a country as large, dispersed and disorganized as India, mandatory is a risk. Plenty of people will slip though the cracks and be unregistered. It works in a tiny country like Germany where it was built on top of other infrastructure (ID cards were introduced in the 1930s; other uses were introduced lated once they had become essentially ubiquitous).
In addition, the lesson of China is salutary: siblings (whose very existence violated the one child policy) were often not registered, and thus missed out on schooling and other benefits. The "hukou" system controlled who was allowed to work or travel -- and surely everyone can imagine a government trying to fight urban slums by prohibiting migration from the countryside (by denying benefits)?
In addition, such programs do well in areas of good communication, and are weaker in more remote areas and those with weaker educational systems. Which is not an India-specific issue. And it is those hard-to-count people who need the program the most. Also those people are in areas where the local officials are typically the most mendacious (which is why they are hard to reach)... you see the problem.
Sure, all my family in Mumbai and Pune have cards, no problem. A few out in the countryside....likely but it's not like I am close to them.
That was one of my points about it being mandatory: the very people it needs to help are the ones who will be last to get it.
BTW the other problem I mention, the instrument of control, is not addressed by your comment.
(Speaking of you comment: someone downvoted it, which (the down voting) doesn't make sense. Your comment was factual and non-inflammatory. I gave it an upvote because I don't like people down voting something just because they disagree with it)
Coming to the security part, which centralised biometric DB doesn't have risks. Social Security Number in the US is pretty similar. No one gets security right the first time and nothing is secure forever.
Mozilla being such a nice organisation with so many good initiatives. Why don't it come forward and dedicate some of its resources in helping out the Indian Government? Wouldn't that be better than just criticising without knowing any ground reality of how things operate in India?
>All people criticising Aadhar for being insecure frankly don't have a real solution in place.
Criticising something doesn't necessitate me to providing a solution. It's like saying all movie critics should be good actors.
>Being an Indian citizen I know and have experienced benefit owing to Aadhar. I get subsidies from the government, one uniform identity that I can use to get important things.
Sure aadhar might have some benefits for you. But the critique is raising many points which make it incredibly dangerous and harmful in the long run. It's like using steroids to gain muscle faster, which is very harmful in the long term.
>Coming to the security part, which centralised biometric DB doesn't have risks.
Yes and those systems do get criticised so it can be improved. Also, aadhar claims to be open source, open API, run by volunteers, none of which it is. It sells your data to private services. Were you going to address that point at all?
>Mozilla being such a nice organisation with so many good initiatives. Why don't it come forward and dedicate some of its resources in helping out the Indian Government?
Indian government has a lot of resources too. It's not exactly poor. It could do a good job if it wanted to. That's not what this criticism is about.
>Wouldn't that be better than just criticising without knowing any ground reality of how things operate in India?
How do you know the author doesn't know the ground reality of things in India?
Look, criticism of a system or policy serves to ignite debate on how best we can make improvements and move forward. Rather than being snarky and getting all defensive and making silly illogical arguments, how about you contribute to the discussion by addressing the points raised in the article?
Poor Indians trying to get benefits but having those benefits taken is a life threatening crisis for those impoverished individuals and families. It is entirely forgivable for those families to ignore the "long term consequences" when the short term consequence is losing the meager benefits they have to corruption. Your argument is like arguing that chemotherapy will ruin your body when the patient is dying of cancer.
If their system can stamp out widespread corruption in exchange for some loss of privacy, the cure is not worse than the disease. The technically minded in wealthy countries should consider helping by proposing a better solution, rather than criticizing measures borne from true desperation.
- They didn't rely on fingerprints, as they are easy to fake, without a high degree of technical sophistication
- There would not be an API for commercial services
I just want the government to be able to provide its services smoothly. I don't want random startups leaking or selling everyone's data.
API for commercial services isn't a bad thing per se. A lot of time, it would save time in documentation. Btw, if you have such a privacy concern, Are you not using Facebook, Whatsapp and all other services for free that sell you data, you behaviour to commercial companies.
It's really easy to believe the FUD going on and coming up some original ideas on how to tackle the problem. I hope you are in the second group that would help make our Country a better place to live in.
Aadhar provides multiple levels of security, Number > Fingerprint > Iris >= OTP / Two-Factor. Finally fingerprints are not as easy to fake, even if they are faked depending on deployment a system can randomly ask for higher level of authentication such as iris or OTP. By having these multiple authentication methods its easier to tune the system for fraud detection vs ease-of-use. I can understand why the government is not publicizing all the anti-fraud measures since its always a game of cat & mouse.
>> There would not be an API for commercial services
This makes no sense, in USA the SSN is typically shared with thousands of services, landlords, apps. In fact the API has potential to open up secure commerce and break the MasterCard/Visa duopoly.
2) Fine. Don't authenticate with Aadhaar when you go to get a commercial service. Why force you choice on me?
And the info they get is name/dob/gender. Which they would anyway have - Aadhaar or no Aadhaar - since you are their customer.
Please think through it.
All the news you hear about Aadhar privacy are fake .
There are no biometrics associated with Social Security. It's just an ID number.
Yes the government is holding your benifits hostage in order to force you to register for aadhar. This is not an inherit advantage of aadhar.
It's an incentive from govt to get people to register for Aadhar to get better/faster service without us common citizens to get exploited by the middleman. I don't see anything wrong in that.
Where does the state in questions stand in corruption ratings, human development index ? very low.
(Looking up in internet) Latest use of aadhar seems to be in mobile internet via Jio telecom - they've used aadhar as identification. How is this not dystopian ? with most of country relying on mobile internet alone and state knowing their entire web activity - how is not dystopian?
Going by a similar analogy - Should a US citizen use SSN to get a home-worker-robot from a private company like (Google,SpaceX) to help with all daily chores ? BIG NO
India has also been known for its infamous caste society (read prejudice) for few millenia - will unique identification help eradicate or increase the problem further ? can anybody explain which applies here and how ?
Although I am not against having an unique ID for citizens in a country. Such systems will become easy tools for few powerful. We so often get rants in HN about facebook(and others) abusing privacy (listening to audio, tracking most of our web browsing).
How is with aadhar and facts above help prevent a state or private-company or mix-of-both-them not become big brother ?
edit: removed a sentence which got repeated.
Aadhaar has nothing to do with you web activity. It's used as KYC - Know your Customer - for getting the JIO connection. It's optional, and as an alternative you can submit a xerox of any ID documents for your KYC. Most european countries require an ID document to get a mobile connection as well - Italy for example.
> Going by a similar analogy - Should a US citizen use SSN to get a home-woker-robot from a private company like (Google,SpaceX) to help with all daily chores ? BIG NO
More apt analogy would be that should a US citizen use SSN to to get a bank account at Citibank? BIG YES
> India has also been known for its infamous caste society (read prejudice) for few millenia - will unique identification help eradicate or increase the problem further ? can anybody explain which applies here and how ?
That has nothing to do with Aadhaar so I would ignore it.
> Where does the state in questions stand in corruption ratings, human development index ? very low.
It's also one of the freest countries in Asia according to Freedom House, and has robust institutions. It's the world's biggest democracy for 70 years now - during which western countries like Spain and Portugal were rules by dictators.
Please keep you condescending attitude to yourself. Indias are well informed to make an informed choice in this matter, and they have.
EDIT IN RESPONSE TO YOUR EDIT:
> How is with aadhar and facts above help prevent a state or private-company or mix-of-both-them not become big brother ?
Because Mister it's only used for KYC. Aadhaar system only stores a few attributes - Name/DOB/gender/address-if-available. That's data every goverment in this world keeps of its citizens. Do you understand now how you and Mozilla are fear mongering?
You forgot to mention that if you take xerox you will be charged 200 rs and a delay of at-least a week and if you provide Aadhaar you will get almost immediately.
"Also JIO will not use Aadhaar for spying on users browsing activity" is based on trust and not by design. Not everyone trusts Reliance or any corporation because it is run by many people and one human is sufficient to abuse.
Ok, I am Jio SIM company. So I have your aadhar KYC or a xerox of your aadhar card as well. How as a citizen, can you trust me (a private company) to not pass your web activity to state. eg: say you are an NGO using JIO sim and is working for getting rid of big corruption in state. How will you ensure my company and state will not track your every web activity ? It all sounds familiar when you know privacy concerns of Chinese humanitarians - read great firewall of internet.
>> It's the world's biggest democracy for 70 years now.
How does being biggest in numbers help in democracy ? Democracy is pretty old my friend. 70 years is again a very small age in democracy.
People have to remember that even if the present government has good intentions and the PM is doodh ka dhulla (translation: incorruptible), Governments do not last but these programs will and if there is a way to exploit something at this scale, you better bet it some government (if not today's) will.
Aadhar has been abused in the present, the government has lied about its purpose over its entire existence and has directly abused SC instructions.
The AG for the govt has gone on and said that Indian's don't have a right to privacy in court, and their numbers don't hold up to scrutiny.
This has all happened in the present, none of what I have said is even exaggeration, it's actually happened.
The iSpirit guy was caught, publicly, creating a troll army to abuse Pro Privacy supporters.
Its insane. Do not expect the people fighting for aadhar to ever stop supporting it.
Aadhar is their hero, it ushers in a new age for India - any one who fights against this new age is misguided at best, or an enemy of progress at worst.
Its absurd.
I don't get this ! What exactly is this linkage solving ? Additionally everyone who advocates this disregards the fact that there are Non-resident Indians who are required to pay taxes but they are not entitled to an Aadhaar card and resident non-Indians who also need to pay taxes who are not required to get an Aadhaar card.
Additionally, how exactly is the deduplication of the PAN database happening ? (ie: who is doing this and what information do they have access to ? eg: is it a private entity who would also benefit from knowing tax income slabs for analytics ?? ...do you really want your service providers insurance/health care/ISP/grocery provider to know the income tax slab you fit in ?)
Income tax records are protected by very strict laws already.
There are understandably benefits and convenience, however the articles focus is not that. It highlights the inherent threats to citizens individual freedoms that has somehow been missed by commentators.
I am reminded of this feeling, because this author sits in his/her nice comfy office in Mountain View mouthing off on something with no understanding of ground realities; to me this is absurd. When I say reality, I mean actually living there. Taj Mahal selfies and elephant rides are not counted :)
Does anyone care about privacy in India as much as they do in the US? I seriously doubt it. Let's be real, most of us (Indians in the US) did not even know what privacy meant and we don't really care about it. If we did, we wouldn't be posting on FB, Twitter, Instagram etc. or signing up for a time share presentation just to get a 3 day hotel stay ;)
Yet, they try every day - to over come that with whatever tools and education in front of them.
MANY people in India, aside from the brigade yelling "efficiency and progress", do not value efficiency and progress.
So they do care, and will definitely care once they realize they were sold a bum dream.
Exactly, thanks for making my point. There are such fundamental problems in India that privacy laws are the least of the layman's problems.
Do you seriously think someone who doesn't have basic ameneties (that we take for granted) cares about this? Get real, they don't.
The tech sphere in India is divided into straight up optimizers, for whom things like privacy are an impediment to the progress of the nation. Said progress will make everyone's lives better, so it must progress.
These are the majority of coders that seem to be in the Indian sphere.
In sharp contrast, are the people currently fighting Aadhar in the Supreme court, who believe that privacy is the fundament of a nation in the first place. That without privacy you cannot have a democracy.
And this is just online, what actually happens between the closed doors of power is utterly bereft of what normal American HN crowd would consider civil liberties and human rights.
For those who actually control the system, losses and inaccuracy in aadhar are the same as errors in banking transactions. As long as theres a X sigma error rate, they don't care.
On the whole, pretty disappointed in this article from Mozilla.
Even if this hasn't happened yet, Are there any measures in place to keep this from happening?... Ever... Irrespective of the party in power?
The current government does not even want to acknowledge the possibility let alone describe the checks and measures put in place to avoid it from happening.
Ehat I find outrageous is that Cambridge Analytica can assemble a full profile of everybody in the country and it's just progress. But, god forbid, the government institutes an identifier to provide better services!
These are all valid questions raised by that article but could have done a better job of explaining these problems and its implications.
Non govt agencies need your consent to get your data, if you don't want that just don't authenticate.
The article suggests that government is selling your data to private companies, which is such a big misrepresentation I wonder how Mozilla let its name be used for it. Do they not care for their reputation anymore?
Private companies can access your data only if you give them you consent by authenticating, and all they get is name/dob/gender/address-if-avialable. Which they would have anyways since you are their customer - mobile provider, bank etc.
There should be an overarching privacy law in India covering disclosure, insurance, etc; but that's a separate debate.
Aadhar was originally sold as just an ack this number matches those finger prints.
Now in the 2016 act, it provides all those details. All of which are enough to determine your religion, caste and more.
The issue is not about the tech, it is about trust and about rights.
None of which are directly responsible for increasing GDP, just the same way GDP is not responsible for making the difference between being a bunch of companies and being a nation.
SSNs don't even have a checksum to detect typos, nor any convenient mechanism to issue a replacement number if one is compromised.
Using the security flaws of the SSN implementation to justify security flaws in any modern identity system is just not rational. If anything it shows that people didn't learn from history.
Let's first talk about the implementation: How many cards do we have in India specially for ID purposes? PAN for taxes, Raashan card for food grains and subsidies are the two names I can think of from the gamut of ids. Now a person needs Aadhar to literally do everything not including taxes and subsidies. Why is that? Isn't it enough that people kowtow to babus to get their other cards that we now need this? People praising direct benefits, was it not possible using raashan card? If your answer is well they could be fakes? Then wake up to the fact that there can be fake Aadhar cards too.
Second, lets talk about privacy. Fine there is a new card. Why do they need iris scans and finger prints? What is the need? That too in a government infrastructure which is surely not protecting it properly - http://www.livemint.com/Industry/73F92SKvUKxyngjfx7O0aJ/UIDA...
UIDAI said this: “It is an isolated case of an employee working with a bank’s Business Correspondent company making an attempt to misuse his own biometrics which was detected by UIDAI internal security system and subsequently actions under the Aadhaar Act have been initiated,” according to a statement by UIDAI. (http://www.livemint.com/Politics/poeRx6xesHcUn6WpOJuJjN/Aadh...)
So it is a system which can be compromised by a motivated employee? What was the benefit again? Oh right stamping out corruption. Lets see how long that lasts.
I have refused to get Aadhar card because I don't want to share my biometric data. Many say what is wrong if you have or never going to do something wrong. I refer to you: "Don’t confuse privacy with secrecy. I know what you do in the bathroom, but you still close the door. That’s because you want privacy, not secrecy." (https://medium.com/@FabioAEsteves/i-have-nothing-to-hide-why...)
I never wanted one because I am not opting for subsidies by choice. I earn enough and pay my taxes on time. But this forced choice of filing returns only using Aadhar has left me no choice.
And for the tinfoils out there. About some kind of conspiracy about the timing. Same could be said about Aadhar. What is the reason government is rejecting people's concern and supreme court directive of not making this mandatory? If some kind of foreign money is involved is the logic here, same could be said about Nandan Nilekani and his private company which started this all.
For the same reason a bank requires your signature. To authenticate you. But in India because we still have some illiteracy signatures won't do. That's why it uses Biometrics. This didn't come to your mind? Does it not reflect poorly on you?
> So it is a system which can be compromised by a motivated employee? What was the benefit again? Oh right stamping out corruption. Lets see how long that lasts.
Mister, in the alternative system - signature/xerox - there's no audit trail. So anyone with a pen paper can forge you signature for example. With Aadhaar you at least get notification anytime authentication happens.
You seem to believe that those who have built Aadhaar, haven't thought through all this, while you can. Classic case of arm chair analyst I may assume from you arguments.
> People praising direct benefits, was it not possible using raashan card? If your answer is well they could be fakes? Then wake up to the fact that there can be fake Aadhar cards too.
How exactly would you fake BM to get an extra Aadhaar card? Make an fake eye in a lab, and get someone at enrollment center to register that?
The problem with ration cards was that not only fakes, but also that they were not well organized sructured at all. Have you every walked into a tehsildar's office?
On top of it this data is often found floating around in many unguarded excel files all over the web.
Its trivially easy to break people into caste buckets.
The Indian ID drive has ensured that benefits make it to the people who need them without 80% of it being skimmed by corrupt bureaucrats.
Having a real identification gives very poor individuals the identification necessary to open bank accounts and interact with the financial sector.
It's the first really reliable census data for a lot of areas.
It's disgusting that Mozilla sits there and pontificates about stopping programs which solve problems _they don't have_. In 50 years, when a couple hundred million Indians aren't having trouble getting enough to eat because their government subsidies were stolen, then maybe it's worth having this conversation. Until then, shut up and and let India solve its own problems, and don't help people starve to death on account of your pompous moral litmus tests.
I'm not entirely opposed to a UID system in India, but the way its been legislated and implemented in the last few years is absolutely disgusting.
India has absolutely 0 laws when it comes to privacy. Who is accountable when your data is leaked? Its literally upto the Aadhar committee whether they prosecute any leak of data.
that's the game played; radical programs are raised and enforced in environments where it is nigh impossible to exist without them so that the corruption and moral negligence caused by such programs is swept under the rug for later generations 'to deal with' (the point being that later generations will be even less capable of reversing such programs as they will likely be even more reliant on them)
see: 'indentured servitude' for similar strategies.
And how having bio-metric ID solves problem of stolen subsidies? Every time a subsidy is stolen, aaddhar card will shoot an arrow into corrupt bureaucrats.
Our poor does not have access to Education and Law so they don't really know where to seek justice.
THere is NO short cut to institutions and habit building.
You could build a million toilets, and people still wouldn't use it in India, because the older institutions and habits are stronger.
In the same way, just having a magical tech bullet is a favorite fantasy of people who haven't seen the cross of human institutions and actual human behavior.
Aadhar is already shown to not work on its promised targets, but has of course been expanded to do everything from book tickets, to get phones.
This I promise, once the ruling coalition changes, the pro-aadhar brigade will change their tune, once they worry that their neck is on the line.
Convenience and efficiency over your rights are terrible choices.
Before the Aadhar, when the Govt. started distributing PIN enabled smartcards to villagers (for food/cash transfers/employment), corrupt officials just started forcing villagers to give up their PIN and give up part of their balance if they wanted to see their food/cash/jobs.
A similar thing is going to happen / probably already happening with Aadhaar where local officials are going to force folks to give up part of their cash/jobs/rations if they want to see any of it, even after these people use their fingerprints/whatever to access whatever they are entitled to.
One of the reasons this biometric ID project was launched was purportedly to get rid of duplicate/fake IDs. (We already have a zillion ID systems - PAN, Driver's licence, Passports, Voter Id, Ration cards, NREGA Id, etc). However by 2013 itself, the govt. said it had detected 34,000 duplicate/fake Aadhaar IDs already. The real number is probably much higher and growing. There are several instances of biometric Aadhaar ID cards successfully registered for dogs as well!
Several Govt. organizations have already leaked (most accessible via a Google search) ~135 million Aadhar numbers along with names, addresses, photos [1]. The incompetent officials simply do not give a fuck about privacy/security.
The problem isn't ID/biometrics but lack of law enforcement which is going to be a problem regardless of Aadhaar. The current leadership vehemently opposed Aadhar due to privacy concerns before the elections, and immediately changed tune.
The danger with hogwash projects such as Aadhar (other than surveilance/loss of privacy/centralizing of power) is that they masquerade as solutions to problem which they never solve in the first place. The poor and hungry will still fucked in the end, but the new surveilance/censorship regime will be here to stay.
If serving the poor is the cause, why is a biometric ID needed (Adhaar is being made compulsory for:) for air travel, rail travel, getting a cellular connection, appearing for high school/university board exams! The Govt. now has a central kill switch to end a dissenting person's life simply by cancelling/blocking their ID! If not by malice then definitely by incompetence at the very least is going to get the lives of scores of people ruined. This project is a disaster and Mozilla is being polite in it's criticism.
[1]http://www.livemint.com/Politics/oj7ky556p6vdljXpRw8gPP/135-...
>> for air travel, rail travel,
Security
>> getting a cellular connection
Security
>> appearing for high school/university board exams
Prevent cheating
State called Uttar Pradesh.
If you consider India as 3rd world, then UP is 3rd world of India.
Here are the emotional benefits of Aadhar :
My parents don't have to bribe the local gas connections distribution agents.
Which means,
No need to stay in long queue from 8 In the morning, not to get your cooking cylinder, but to pay the bribe.
Since the government has advertised the Direct Benefit far too much,on TV, on radio, the middleman (distributer) can't cheat anymore.
This government markets everything and hence the poor and underprivileged has started questioning those the officials who don't do their jobs or provide the things exactly as advertised.
The middleman I am talking about are not government employees directly, but taking a distribution agency does involve bribe payment.
Those middleman paid bribe before 2014 government to get the agency, hoping that they will get the roi(i is bribe) within a few years.
2014 government single handedly has destroyed the corrupt ( who paid bribe) middleman in gas distribution
Most of the proganda against this government is supported people who felt entitled being part of a government job, (extra bribe ) because the Congress Government had created deep corruption webs for 60 years.
Notice a fun fact, Aadhar was introduced before 2013, before the election of 2014.
Not many these so called privacy and human rights activists stood up then.
All propaganda against Aadhar has been intensified only after the Aadhar number started saving money and stared to directly benefit people.
Coincidence?
Also, when the government decided to link Aadhar to the income tax returns, again these privacy activists have become active ?
Coincidence?
Remember, the old lady in a village in in 3rd world does not know about privacy, she is happy because now her 15 son does not need to stand and bribe the gas distribution agency and can study for a day extra.
We all know we could reduce crime by putting cameras in people's homes. But we don't do that, because there are risks to those kinds of invasive measures.
Aadhar is infrastructure that allows for centralized control of the population. Sometimes that control will be used for good things, like stamping out bribery. But that control can just as easily be used for evil too. And history has shown time and time again that's exactly what happens. I live in Canada, a country filled with refugees of authoritarian regimes. Among my friends I personally know lots of people who have fled those kinds of regimes; I know very few people who have fled countries because of bribery. The latter is annoying and unproductive, but the former is deadly.
That's why you're seeing so much opposition to Aadhar: because it's incredibly dangerous.
edit: better wording
Aadhar isn't risk-free, but if the majority of the country want it (i.e. if, being informed of the possible consequences, they aren't rioting or impeaching the guy extending it), I feel like that's their choice to make, just like the choice of having police would be.
Also: One of the things about our modern, globalized world, is that any state that's not a military superpower in its own right can't really get away with bootstrapping toward totalitarian autocracy for very long before some concerned state that is a military superpower steps in with a foreign-aided coup. I'm not asserting that that is always a good thing for the world—but, sort of like the "re-insurance" companies backing financial institutions, this arrangement allows smaller states to do "risky" things like using a panopticon to destroy corruption, with a bit of a safety net.
Surprisingly, in India if people would be against such a measure then only because it would violate the modesty of women, and not because it invades the privacy.
Do you know the difference between a reader and writer ?
Please Google the difference.
Not every reader on hn for over 5 years needs to have an account.
And, not every old account need not contribute anything useful to the discussion.
Good Day.
I realize you're probably talking about people in India in this context, not people in the U.S., but I helped write part of this anti-Aadhar post back in 2012:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/09/indias-gargantuan-biom...
In support of your view that some critics have minimal knowledge of India, but also in opposition to your view that critics are motivated by considerations of Indian politics, I don't know which party was in power in India either before or after the 2014 election.
Some privacy activists did stood and enquired but did not get much support or voice.
After 6 years who are the people who are creating noise and running from corner to corner ?
Do these people actually care about privacy? Hard to think.
Have these people lost money due to direct benefit scheme? Plausible.
There is no reason to blatantly hate Aadhar unless
- you are a corrupt government employee
- you are a middleman contractor
- you had invested in something and were hoping that the roI will come as a bribe from the common people
- you fear more direct to benefit schemes in future because you have been accumulating wealth by being a middleman all through your life.
-- you are a privacy freak typing on a device assembled in China.
They lacked the motive to actually establish strong and performance oriented institutions, hence corruption became a daily routine in India.
Slowly, some(not all) things are progressing.
Using Aadhar to directly transfer the money to exact recipient has rattled those who had enjoyed or felt entitled to waste the subsidiaries or sell the subsidiaries items in outer market + then ask the government for extra subsidiaries again and again and again.
The current PM Modi himself criticized it then : https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/453543852175925248?l...
Coincidence?
The riots in 1984 and in 2001 showed us how voter lists can, and will, be misused by people in power to their own benefit.
The riots happened in 2002 and NOT 2001 (at least get the year right), and unless you are arguing abolishing voter lists, or have a specific argument that involves Aadhar. I don't see how this is in anyway relevant to this discussion.
^ What happens when a centralised system with brittle architecture fails.
For all the nationalistic spiel, the fact remains that even if I have a passport that proves my identity, service providers (public and private, equally) are forced to ask (or just blindly ask for) my Aadhar number (which I don't have) . Ironic isn't it.
Mozilla is equivalent of those who criticized "Green revolution" because if fed starving people without causing "social revolution" etc. Aadhar has potential to cause "Digital revolution" and decades from now Mozilla will be on the wrong side of history.
Finally any Indian in USA simply has no right to criticize Aadhar since the US Visa process requires biometrics from all visitors.
I find the "no right to criticize" theory confusing.
I understand if your point is that one might be hypocritical in endorsing one government's biometric collection but not another. But I (a non-Indian) have criticized both US-VISIT and Aadhar. I don't want the U.S. government to have a database of visitors' (or citizens') biometric data, nor do I want the Indian government to have a database of citizens' (or visitors') biometric data. There need not be any hypocrisy or logical contradiction in that.
Edit: it looks from elsewhere in the thread like your point is that Indians in the U.S., in particular, must have acquiesced in giving their biometric data to the US-VISIT program (otherwise they would not have been admitted). I think there is some force to that argument, but it also seems to suggest that people who accept any government's preconditions for doing anything that they did not absolutely have to do are then giving up their right to criticize the government for imposing that requirement. For example, some people in the U.S. have criticized local government for requiring a government cosmetology license in order to practice eyebrow threading. I assume that some of those critics have nonetheless signed up for such licenses. Did they completely surrender their right to criticize that requirement when they did so?
Such hyperbole weakens your argument. It's borderline zealous. I don't think you are a zealot and I think you have a valid argument, although I disagree with you. But expressing good thoughts in hyperbole is not effective here.
(Another example is the "no right to criticise" argument. Nobody cares who has a legal right to do disagree. This isn't a court of law. All we care about are good arguments. If someone is hypocritical, point that out. But people can be hypocritical while still having a good point.)
>Finally any Indian in USA simply has no right to criticize Aadhar since the US Visa process requires biometrics from all visitors.
This simply doesn't hold any logic. If Aadhar is so good, then it should be able to stand up to any argument based on its merits regardless of where it's coming from. Can you actually present any points against the points being made by Mozilla?
Are you ok with your intimate personal details being sold to private companies? Maybe your son or daughter have a sickness and now all the private companies can know about it. Maybe years from now the collected data will be used to make decisions about whether to admit them into a school or hire them as professionals.
Please think calmly and logically rather than being sensational, egotistical, and personal. Nobody is trying to hurt your "Indian Pride".
I can understand how Aadhar reduces the corruption of common people (like in the case of tax evasion). And the government loves to reduce corruption of the common man. However it is very unwilling to lower its own corruption.
This is BS because getting a visa is a conscious choice, Aadhar is forced upon India's residents. You're attacking people for having an opinion that's contrary to yours.
About your other points - no one is denying the benefits of having a strong unique ID system that lets people interface with government services; the problem is that Aadhar has no safeguards for privacy - which you would've focused on had you bothered to read the article.
> not making insinuations about astroturfing and shills, unless you have evidence
That's confusing: What evidence could users have? In my comment, one of the ones you objected to, I cited some strong patterns in the discussion. That's going to be the best evidence that users have access to unless it's very clumsily executed. The astroturfers aren't going to out themselves; looking like ordinary users is the fundamental requirement of 'astroturf'.
So if there's no possible sufficient evidence, do you really mean, 'don't bring it up at all?' I understand not accusing individuals without evidence, but nobody even should point out the general possibility, saying for example, "it seems like something odd is going on here; all these talking points look the same and are made provocatively ..."?
There is no doubt astroturf happens here, simply because there is overwhelming evidence that it is rampant on the Internet and HN isn't exempt. If users can't discuss the topic at all (probably not what you meant), that would shield the bad actors and be a recipe for it to happen unrestrained.
EDIT: some clarifying edits
Posting these for everyone's benefit.
1) Aadhaar is not fundamentally different than a National ID which every other country in this world has. India not only lacked it, out birth registrations certificates weren't reliable at all.
2) Yes they do collection Biometrics(BM). But BM are never shared with any other agency/company. And it's strictly codified in law. BM are only used for deduplication(1b+ population), and authentication.
3) For KYC(Know your Customer) or E-Payments BM based authentication is much more secure than what's being used currently - signatures, and self attested xerox which anyone can forge/photoshop.
4) You can also ask Aadhaar server to dispatch an SMS to your mobile number every time an authentication happens. Now compare that your signature/xerox which anyone can forge/photoshop and you would have no idea about it.
5) In this changing world who would you want to control identity? A private company like Apple which can block you or some developer anytime and there would be no recourse? Or a govt agency - backed by a law of Parliament - that you can drag to court.
6) Want to build a marketplace for house-maids? Or for farmers? Don't want it bogged down by scamsters which in the end depressing adaption?
Easy add Aadhaar based autnetication to your app. http://bridge.aadhaarconnect.com/
7) For financial products like bank accounts, mutual funds etc Aadhaar brings down compliance cost. So for a MF while in the old system it wouldn't be viable to take an investment of less than 50k Rs because the compliance cost itself would be 1k Rs or something, now you can do it under 10 Rs.
Are we making a better world or not, in which the poor have access to Mutual funds, Insurance etc or Mozilla thinks it's not?
Please watch this https://youtu.be/LJCEyqcKN3Q?t=5m50s and tell me which other country in this world can match this. Getting a loan in under 8 minutes. Or opening a bank account in under 10 min.
This is a technological revolution - but not happening in Copenhagen or Zurich, but dusty villages of India.
I have had enough of these Aadhaar critics - and now Mozilla - who have colonised their minds with some western ideas, and are unable to see what's happening in India.
Bottom line, there's no better example of how technology can drastically change lives for the poor and the needy than Aadhaar.
Those who are unable to see it, are usually just biased because need clicks for their publications, or need to build their reputation as security analyst or something by bashing something. Look into this thread itself, and you'll find them linking to each other's twitter profile etc. Sickening really.
Not the United States!
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card... seems to suggest national IDs are voluntary in 15 countries, nonexistent in 9, and mandatory in 82. One thing that seems possibly significant is that six of the non-mandatory ones include the entirety of the "Anglosphere".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglosphere
That's right, each of the Anglosphere countries has no mandatory national ID. And although the culture and politics of those countries varies quite a bit, including with regard to privacy and civil liberties issues and beliefs about state power, I believe that each one includes a significant number of citizens who are quite proud that there's no mandatory ID, regarding it as a particular way in which their country is more free than others, and as something worth defending.
EDIT IN RESPONSE TO YOUR EDIT
An birth certificate is also an ID. There's no rational reason of being proud of not having a national ID, when you have mandatory birth registrations and birth certificates.
If anything Aadhaar store less information than your BC - no record of who your parents are for example.
> The Indian ID drive has ensured that benefits make it to the people who need
> them without 80% of it being skimmed by corrupt bureaucrats.
> Having a real identification gives very poor individuals the identification
> necessary to open bank accounts and interact with the financial sector.
> It's the first really reliable census data for a lot of areas.
http://aadhaarcarduid.org/uidai-cancelled-3-8-lakh-fake-aadh...
> It's disgusting that Mozilla sits there and pontificates about stopping
> programs which solve problems _they don't have_. In 50 years, when a couple
> hundred million Indians aren't having trouble getting enough to eat because
> their government subsidies were stolen, then maybe it's worth having this
> conversation. Until then, shut up and and let India solve its own problems,
> and don't help people starve to death on account of your pompous moral
> litmus tests.
I often think about this when it comes to Indians reacting to critizims about India:
Except from the book "Restart"[1]
> Then the denial, the one form of intellectual argument we have mastered.
> India has no problem; if it has a problem, it is nobody else’s business;
> everybody else also has this problem; everybody else has other problems, why
> don’t you talk about those instead; why are you saying this is a problem, it is
> a part of our 5000-year- old culture; we knew the answers to all problems in
> the Vedic era; even if we have this problem, it is not our fault; even if we
> have this problem, we cannot accept any of the solutions that have been shown
> to work elsewhere; even if we have this problem, it is much better than it was;
> perhaps we have this problem, but it is none of your business.
http://www.amazon.in/Restart-Last-Chance-Indian-Economy/dp/8...
Please don't break the HN guidelines by going on about downvotes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14431021 and marked it off-topic.
a. You said going on about downvotes, whereas I mentioned it only once, and you probably didn't bother to check whether the only other reference of the same kind was not made by me.
b. My actual comment and the replies I received (iow, the thread) were not off-topic if you had bothered to read them.
Most Aadhar criticism comes from and is supported by
People who have lost money due to due to direct benefit scheme.
Those people accumulated lots of money over years by producing fake bills, extra names in the ration cards.
Aadhar card started to roll out in 2011 itself, How many of these privacy freaks had raise the voice and if they did, were they supported ?
No.
Only after Aadhar started saving money for the poor, hence the money started drying out of pockets of those corrupt officials and contractors, does this activism against Aadhar has been supported.
Who are those people who were OK with Aadhar for 4 years, but are not OK now?
Now that Aadhar will be used for some more direct to benefit transfer scmehes, will you see more activists and more noise.
Think.
I will give you a hint.
How do you think does a 9 to 5 government employee is able to accommodate wealth to send his son to one of ivy leavgue schools or enroll him in a music class or send him to costly coaching classes or send him to top schools.
Where did that money came form?
Won't those sons oppose Aadhar whose dads tool bribe to accumulate wealth to make sure the son gets educated/skilled.
A lot of people thrive and plan their yearly budget based on bribe amount not salary amount?
Would not those people oppose Aadhar?
Seeing the same, generally weak talking points, angrily defending the Indian government, advocating nationalistic points of view, and repeated over and over - it all reminds me of threads critical of China and Russia.
You can't make insinuations of astroturfing or shillage on HN without evidence. Haven't we discussed this with you before? Please don't comment like this again.
I hadn't heard of this policy until now. I've seen very many comments make similar claims in many discussions and I didn't see this response. I just checked the Guidelines and it's not discussed there. Please consider how a user would learn about it - I'm pretty active and I haven't seen it. One possible source of miscommunication: Users probably see only a tiny fraction of what you do, and you could make this comment 100 times and maybe only a fraction of users would come across it at all.
But it's especially disappointing to read the accusation, which has no basis as far as I know. I've always been respectful of the mods, other users, the forum, and its rules, even when I think they aren't great ideas (inevitably, nobody will agree with everything). If I had known about this policy, I would have respected it too. I don't know how I was cast into the role of an antagonist. Like anyone, I don't appreciate loose allegations about me.
...
> You can't make insinuations of astroturfing or shillage on HN without evidence
I don't quite understand the policy as stated. I understand not accusing individuals without evidence, but I certainly didn't do that even by implication. Half my comment was a question asking if there was evidence that it happens in other places, not HN. I also raised the possibility of it happening here, but clearly was unsure and 'insinuated' nothing; I meant simply what I said. If not even that is allowed ...
But to be clear, my concerns don't mean I won't respect your forum's rules. (However, uncertainties will make it more likely that it will happen unintentionally)
EDIT: Moved paragraph with questions of general interest to your post at the top of the discussion.
India hasn't banned DDT which has been banned for decades in every other country. We have crippled infrastructure, severe poverty. Yet India has time and money to implement one of the most ambitious Universal ID systems in the world.
And it makes sense. Would you want a private company like ApplePay/PayPal/AliPay control payments, and be able to block merchants at will like apple does, or a public agency you can drag to court.
Not a complaint, but it looks like the symptoms of what I asked about.
Instead if you want to blame some national party for it, it's you choice.
FYI I don't have downvotes powers.
Btw, I got donwvotes too. But I'm blaming anyone for it.
There are more anti-aadhaar green accounts in this thread than pro-aadhaar. If your only argument is to bring thowaway statements like Nationalism/Russia etc into it, then it just reflects poorly on you.