When asked about why India
chose to go with the UID/Aadhaar model when several countries like France,
Britain and Germany have disbanded such identification projects, Nandan
Nilekani, a former official of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)
replied, “Their purpose was not development, inclusion, saving government money
or curbing corruption. How can you compare Aadhaar with the smart card project
in some other country? Even I would have disbanded those” in an interview with BusinessLine.
His reply is a classic case of outright fibbing, misrepresentation and
sophistry. It represents a sample of all the replies UIDAI’s has provided to
concerned Indians since its inception.
Take the case of
Britain mentioned by Nilekani, a 15-page
Wipro document, titled 'Does India need a Unique Identity Number?’ cited the
example of the United Kingdom's Identity Cards Act, 2006, on page no. 6 to
advance the argument for a biometric UID/Aadhaar number in India. If it was not
comparable as Nilekani will have us believe, why did Wipro cite Britain’s
identification project to make a case for UID/Aadhaar for Indians.
Wipro’s document is significant because UIDAI
and UID/Aadhaar is a product of a 14-page long document titled 'Strategic
Vision: Unique Identification of Residents' prepared by Wipro Ltd and submitted
to the Processes Committee of the Planning Commission which was set up in July
2006. Its vision statement reads: 'Creating a unique identification system of
all residents in the country for efficient, transparent, reliable and effective
delivery of various welfare and private services to the common person.' The
cover page of the document mentions the National Institute for Smart Government
(NISG), Department of Information Technology (now named MeitY-Ministry of
Electronics and Information Technology), and Wipro Consulting. Admittedly,
Wipro was the consultant for the design phase and programme management phase of
the pilot UIDAI project. The Hyderabad-based NISG is a not-for-profit company
incorporated in 2002 by the Government of India and Nasscom. NISG aims to
'establish itself as an institution of excellence in e-governance and to
leverage private sector resources through a public-private-partnership mode in
establishing eIndia.'
But when the UK
government stopped its biometric National Identity Cards Scheme neither Wipro
nor its donors and promoters in the government examined as to why the UK did so
and why this decision too is relevant to India. The decision was announced in
the British parliament, the same legislature which passed the India
Independence Act, 1947.
It must be recalled
that under Nilekani’s tenure UIDAI extended “undue favour” to Wipro Ltd. As a
consequence UIDAI incurred an avoidable expenditure of Rs.4.92 crore on an
annual maintenance contract, according to the report of the Comptroller and
Auditor General (CAG) of India presented to the Parliament. UIDAI also incurred
a loss of Rs.1.41 crore by not routing advertisements through the Directorate
of Advertising and Visual Publicity. Unmindful of manifest conflict of interest
UIDAI had entered into a contract with Wipro in May 2011 for supply,
installation and commissioning of servers, storage systems, security systems
and accessories with incidental services in the data centres of the authority
in Bengaluru and Delhi/NCR at a cost of Rs.134.28 crore.
This is not the only
case of irregularity and corruption by UIDAI. It awarded projects to several
companies without issuing tenders. In a RTI reply UIDAI itself disclosed that
total project contracts worth Rs.13,663.22 crore were awarded without any
tenders of which an amount of Rs.6,563 crore has been already spent on issuing
90.3 crore Aadhar cards till May 2015. It also informed that a total 25
companies were awarded different responsibilities for the massive project and
their empanelment was done under the process guidelines of Request For
Empanelment dated May 19, 2014. The companies which have been awarded more than
one project works include: Tata Consultancy Service, Mac Associates, Wipro,
HCL, HP India Sales Pvt. Ltd., National Informatics Centre, Sagem Morpho
Securities Pvt. Ltd (French Safran Group), Satyam Computer Services Ltd, L1
Identity Solutions (earlier US company now part of Safran Group), Totem
International Ltd., Linkwel Telesystems Pvt. Ltd. Sai Infosystems India Ltd,
Geodesic Ltd, ID Solutions, NISG, SQTC, Telesima Communications Pvt. Ltd. The
companies that were awarded a single contract include: Reliance Communication,
Tata Communications, Aircel, Bharati Airtel, BSNL and Railtel Corporation of
India Ltd. Notably, companies like Accenture (USA), L1 and Ernst & Young
has been given access to sensitive data of present and future Indians.
During his tenure at UIDAI, Parliamentary Standing
Committee on Finance its Sixty-Ninth Report on the ‘Demands for Grants
(2013-14)’ observed, “A provision of Rs. 2,620 crore has been allocated in Budget
Estimate (2013-14) for Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and a major
part of the budget provision for Rs. 1,040 crore is earmarked for ‘Enrolment
Authentication and Updation’, out of which an amount of Rs. 1,000 crore has
been earmarked under the head ‘other charges’.” The total budgetary allocations
made for UIDAI since its inception upto 31 March 2014 was Rs 5440.30 crores. For
the year 2009-10, it was Rs 120 crores. For 2010-11, it was Rs 1,900 crores.
For 2011-12, it was Rs 1,470 crores 1,200. For 2012-13, it was 1,758 crores and
for 2013-14, it was Rs 2,620.00 crores. For the year 2014-15, the budget
estimate was Rs 2,039. The budget estimate of expenditure on the project being
implemented by UIDAI was Rs 2,000 crore in 20015-16. For the year 2016-17, the
budget estimate was Rs 990 crores (that included 190 crore first supplementary).
As of February 2017, UIDAI has incurred a total cumulative expenditure of Rs 8,536.83
crores. This includes undefined “other charges” pointed out by the Parliamentary
Committee. Shouldn’t UIDAI provide the details of the expenses incurred under “other
charges”? Take the case of the year 2009-10 when the budget estimate was Rs 120
crores. The final expenditure was Rs 26.21 crores. In the year 2015-16 the
budget estimate was Rs 2,000 crores but the final expenditure was Rs 1679
crores. In 2016-17, when budget estimate (BE) was Rs 990 crores, the final
expenditure is Rs 877.16 crore upto February 2017.
The Parliamentary Committee on Finance has wondered in
its report as to why inflated targets were consistently being given. It
observed, “the total budgetary allocations made for UIDAI since its inception upto
BE 2013-14 is Rs 5440.30 crore, out of which Rs. 2820.30 crore has been utilized
upto 31.03.2013 and the remaining amount of Rs. 2620 has been allocated in BE
2013-14. The Ministry have informed that the average cost per card is estimated
to range from Rs 100 to Rs 157. Taking the average cost per card to be Rs. 130,
the total expenditure for issue of 60 crore cards is estimated to about Rs 7800
crore. Thus, the expected requirement of funds during 2013-14 is Rs. 4979.70
crores, whereas only Rs. 2620 crore has been kept for BE 2013-14, which is thus
grossly inadequate.” It is apparent that there is more to it than meets the eye.
When Nilekani was asked
about “concerns that the Aadhaar could be used in surveys such as the
Socio-economic Caste Census (SECC) for racial profiling, or be linked to EVMs
to determine voting patterns”, he gave an evasive reply saying, “The SECC or
EVM machines have nothing to do with Aadhaar.” Notably Aadhaar is a brand name
of Unique Identification (UID) Number. The UID project was renamed the Aadhaar project
after the UIDAI avowedly had a nationwide competition to find a logo and a
brand name. Curiously, Aadhaar name echoes the name of Bangalore based Adhar
Trust that Nilekani and Rohini Nilekani set up to fund their initiatives
into a government function.
Election Commission of
India on its website has provided answer
to a question about the “system of numbering EVMs”, it states “Each Control
Unit has a unique ID Number (UID), which is painted on each unit with a
permanent marker. This ID Number will be allowed to be noted by the Polling
Agents and will also be recorded in a Register maintained for the purpose by
the Returning Officer. The address tag attached to the Control Unit also will
indicate this ID Number.” A careful perusal of UIDAI documents reveals that it
is linked to the electoral database too. A confidential document of UIDAI
titled ‘Creating a unique identity number for every resident in India’, leaked
by Wikileaks on 13 Nov 2009 reads: “One way to ensure that the unique
identification (UID) number is used by all government and private agencies is
by inserting it into the birth certificate of the infant. Since the birth
certificate is the original identity document, it is likely that this number
will then persist as the key identifier through the individual’s various life
events, such as joining school, immunizations, voting etc.”
The proponents of
world's biggest citizen identification scheme aims to converge electoral photo
identity card (EPIC) numbers of electoral database, the UID/Aadhaar number
database called Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR). In their myopia,
political parties in particular and citizens in general have failed to fathom
its ramifications for voting by electors in a democracy.
In a letter dated 7
June 2011, the Director General and Mission Director of Unique Identification
Authority of India (UIDAI) wrote to Chief Election Commissioner saying, “The
Election Commission of India (ECI) may also like to leverage Aadhaar
infrastructure in cleaning/ updating their existing electoral data base.
Aadhaar numbers issued by the UIDAI can also be included in the list of valid
proof of identity (POI) and proof of address (POA) documents of the Election
Commission during the polls for identity verification.”
The file notings by ECI
on the UIDAI’s letter reads: “How can Aadhaar number used as proof of address”.
The reply from ECI dated 17 June 2011 on the letter from UIDAI. It further
wrote, Aadhaar numbers can be seeded into EPIC and electoral roll databases to
clean those databases and also to bring standardisation and uniformity in the
Election Commission’s databases across the country. UIDAI does provide
necessary technical and financial support under its information and
communications technology (ICT) infrastructure scheme for integration of
Aadhaar number with database of concerned Ministries/ Departments to make them
UID compliant. However, the process and schemes to use Aadhaar numbers for
their applications are to be defined by the concerned Departments
themselves.”
The
notification of 28 January 2009 that set up UIDAI, provides the terms of
reference (TOR) for its work. There is no reference to the collation of UID
number database with electoral database in the TOR. But the TOR does refer to
“collation and correlation with UID and its partner databases.” If this
reference to ‘partner database’ included electoral database, the UID/ Aadhaar
enrolment form never revealed it and took Indian residents for a
ride.
Notably, UIDAI was
constituted in pursuance of the fourth meeting of the Empowered Group of
Ministers (EGoM) headed by the then External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherji
held on 4 November 2008. Shivraj Patil, the then union home minister and A
Raja, the then minister for IT and Communications, HR Bhardwaj, the then law
minister and Mani Shankar Aiyar, the then panchayati raj minister, were members
of the EGoM wherein Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of Planning
Commission was an invitee.
UIDAI argued, “Aadhaar
database is restricted to the name, date of birth, gender, address, facial
image, ten fingerprints and iris of the resident. The data fields are based on
the recommendation of the Demographic and Data field Verification Committee
headed by N Vittal, former chief vigilance commissioner (CVC). Since Aadhaar database contains absolute minimum
information of a resident necessary to establish identity, it is not possible
to include EPIC numbers in the Aadhaar database. However, the ECI should seed
Aadhaar numbers in the electoral database as clarified above.”
Prior to this KM
Chandrasekhar, cabinet secretary, Government of India (GoI) wrote a letter
dated 25 April, 2011 addressed to VK Bhasin, secretary, legislative department
stating, “Aadhaar can be treated as a valid Proof of Identity (PoI) and Proof
of Address (PoA).”
The Election Commission
in its letter dated 4 March 2013 to UIDAI on the subject of “Seeding of Aadhaar
number in Electoral Database” wrote that “Commission feels that it would be
better that EPIC no. is collected at the time of enrollment for Aadhaar
and put in the Aadhaar database…ECI has already issued instructions that
Aadhaar cards can be used as alternative identity documents at polling
station…It may be mentioned here that Ministry of Home Affairs has also agreed
to print EPIC no. on smart card as issued by Registrar General of India…Under
the circumstances, it is once again requested that EPIC no. may be made
mandatory for enrollment in Aadhaar.” In its letter dated 29 October
2012, the ECI had argued that “including EPIC no. as mandatory field in UIDAI
database would enable better integration between UIDAI database and electoral
database, which will make Aadhaar numbers more useful.” This enthusiastic endorsement of illegal UIDAI’s
database and its inexplicable eagerness to merge EPIC no. and electoral
database with a database that faces robust legal challenge merits rigorous
scrutiny.
In a letter dated 16
April 2012, RK Singh, the then secretary, ministry of home affairs (MHA),
currently MP from BJP wrote to Dr SY Quraishi, the then Chief Election
Commissioner (CEC), with reference to latter’s letter dated 4 April 2012
“regarding inclusion of Electoral Photo Identity Card -EPIC number in the
Aadhaar database.”
The secretary, MHA
wrote, “The Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India is
in the process of creating the National Population Register (NPR) in the
country. The NPR, when completed will be a register of all usual residents of
the country, which would have the Aadhaar number besides the demographic and
biometric data. The Government is also considering a proposal to issue Resident
Identity (smart) Cards to all usual residents above the age of 18 years. The
scheme is already making good progress and is likely to be completed in the
next two years.”
The
combination of the office of Census Commissioner and RGI creates a legal
conflict of interest that is required to be examined because Census Act
requires that data of residents of India has to be kept confidential. But RGI
created under Citizenship Act admittedly puts the data in public domain.
Besides
this MHA has also feigned ignorance about the illegality of biometric data
collection under NPR, a fact pointed out by the then BJP’s Prime Ministerial
candidate.
At that time, the
secretary, MHA also wrote, “As a part of the process of creating the NPR, the
EPIC number is also being collected. This would enable mapping of the Aadhaar
number to the EPIC number right from the beginning…Once the mapping is
completed, there could be a lot of synergy between the EPIC and NPR
databases.” He pointed out that “while the registration under the NPR is
mandatory under the provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955, the production of
EPIC Card during the NPR enrolment and capturing the EPIC number is being done
on a voluntary basis from the residents. There are, therefore, gaps in the
collection of the numbers. The gap can easily be bridged as the Authorities
notified for the creation of the NPR are the same as those notified under the
Electoral Law and if necessary instructions are issued by the Election
Commission, they could easily ensure a complete coverage.”
It is intriguing as to
how Election Commission has failed to comprehend the adverse consequences of
such convergence. There is nothing in public domain to suggest that
implications of such merger have been examined.
The then secretary, MHA
informed the CEC that there is mutual agreement between the MHA’s RGI and ECI
that “there is a considerable potential to synchronise the two databases and
set up a unified platform for future updating of the same and sought CEC’s
advice to take it forward. Does the
Election Commission realize that synchronization of the two databases is
happening as per the design of Wipro’s document and is beyond the mandate given
to UIDAI and RGI?
But in the meanwhile as
a consequence of Supreme Court’s order, Election Commission of India revised
its order dated 27 February 2015 on 13 August 2015 stopping merger of
UID/Aadhaar with Voter ID. Its revised order reads: “All further activities
relating to collection/feeding/seeding of Aadhaar Number being undertaken
currently under NERPAP shall be suspended with immediate effect till further
directions from the Commission. In other words, henceforth no more collection
of Aadhaar Numbers from electors or feeding/seeding of collected Aadhaar data
shall be done by any election authority or officials connected with the
NERPAP.” (National Electoral Rolls Purification & Authentication Programme).
While this revised order of the Election Commission is a model order as it
demonstrates how to comply with the Court’s order for all the organisations and
other public and private agencies which are implementing UID/Aadhaar related schemes
and systems. The fact remains the seeding of UID/Aadhaar and Voter ID did
happen while the previous order of Commission regarding National Electoral
Rolls Purification & Authentication Programme was in operation given the
fact that it was widely advertised.
It may recalled that
one of the earliest documents that refer UIDAI is a 14-page long document
titled ‘Strategic Vision: Unique Identification of Residents’ prepared by Wipro
Ltd for the Planning Commission envisaged the close linkage that the UIDAI’s
Aadhaar would have with the electoral database. The use of electoral database
mentioned in Wipro’s document remains on the agenda of the proponents of
Aadhaar.
The reply of the Prime
Minister’s Office (PMO) dated 1 April 2014 transferring the right to
information (RTI) application to Election Commission seems to indicate that
linkage of UIDAI with the Commission has already been established.
In such a backdrop,
PMO’s reluctance to share all the file documents and correspondence relating to
Nilekani and right up to his resignation appears quite sensitive and deserves
scrutiny.
Nilekani referred to
the current “three-member UIDAI Committee under J Satyanarayana, the former IT
secretary”. Satyanarayana is currently a part time Chairman of UIDAI since
September 6, 2016. He has been on Board of NISG. Notably, Satyanarayana has
been the member of the Task Force for preparation of Policy Document on
Identity and Access Management under National e-Governance Programme (NeGP).
This Task Force was constituted by Office Memorandum dated 31 October, 2006,
which was supposed to submit its report by 25 December 2006. Coincidentally, the Processes Committee of the
Planning Commission which was set up in July 2006 commissioned the task of
preparing “Strategic Vision: Unique Identification of Residents” to Wipro Ltd during
the same period. The other members of the Task Force included 34 members
besides the Chairman, Dr S.I. Ahson, Professor & Head, Department of
Computer Science, Jamila Milia Islamia and the Member Secretary, Ms Pratibha
Lokhande, Scientist, National Informatics Centre. The members included 11
Technology Solutions Providers namely, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Computer
Associates, Novell, Honeywell, HP, Red Hat, ILANTUS Technologies, MPhasis and PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC). The Task Force submitted version 7 of its 65 page long report in April
2007.
This report talked
about “Citizen Identities” and “Owner of identities”. This report states, “The
Identity Information is stored by multiple agencies in multiple documents like
Ration card, Driving License, Passport, Voter’s card, Birth Certificate etc. The
purpose of the Project unique ID (UID) initiated by the Planning Commission is
to create a central database of resident information and assign a Unique
Identification number to each such resident (Citizens and Persons of Indian
Origin) in the country….The appropriate Identity Aggregations and
Synchronization should be used to integrate systems to share their identity
information.” This April 2007 report reveals that “National UID Project: This
project has been initiated, with Voter ID Numbers and BPL households in the
first instance.” It is evident that long before the arrival of Nilekani in July
2009 as Chairman of UIDAI, the UID/Aadhaar project was already unfolding. He
just came and dishonestly claimed credit for it. This report also discloses that
each registered judicial court has a unique identification (UID) number at Sub
ordinate Courts, High Court and Supreme Court. This effort seems to be part of
profiling and surveillance of judicial institutions.
Notably, this report
appears to be making one of the earliest references to “Biometric
authentication” in India as “any process that validates the identity of a user
who wishes to sign into a system by measuring some intrinsic characteristic of
that user. Biometric samples include fingerprints, retina scans, face
recognition, voiceprints, and even typing patterns. Biometric authentication
depends on measurement of some unique attribute of the user. They presume that
these user characteristics are unique, that they may not be recorded and
reproductions provided later, and that the sampling device is tamper-proof.”
It defines biometrics
as “A measure of an Attribute of a Natural Person’s physical self, or of their physical
behavior. In principle at least, a Biometric can be used: to validate an entity
(where the entity is a Natural Person); as an Authenticator for an Assertion
involving an Entity; and as a means of restricting the use of a personalised
Token to the appropriate Natural Person. Examples include: fingerprint,
voiceprint, and iris-scan. Biometrics is generally, “the study of measurable
biological characteristics. In computer security, biometrics refers to
authentication techniques that rely on measurable physical characteristics that
can be automatically checked. There are several types of biometric
identification schemes: Face: the analysis of facial characteristics;
Fingerprint: the analysis of an individual's unique fingerprints; Hand
geometry: the analysis of the shape of the hand and the length of the fingers;
Retina: the analysis of the capillary vessels located at the back of the eye;
Iris: the analysis of the colored ring that surrounds the eye's pupil;
Signature: the analysis of the way a person signs his name; Vein: the analysis
of pattern of veins in the back if the hand and the wrist; Voice: the analysis
of the tone, pitch, cadence, and frequency of a person's voice.”
This report defines “Identification”
as “The process whereby data is associated with a particular Identity. It is performed
through the acquisition of data that constitutes an Identifier for that
identity.” It also defines “Identifier” as “One or more data-items concerning
an Identity that are sufficient to distinguish it from other Identities, and
that are used to signify that Identity. Identifiers include names. A natural
person may use more than one name, and variants of each name. Identifiers also
include ‘id numbers’ or ‘id codes’ issued by other Entities that the Entity
interacts with. An Entity may be assigned many such numbers and codes. A legal
person may have many names (e.g. associated with business units, divisions,
branches, trading names, trademarks and brand names), and multiple ‘id numbers’
and ‘id codes’ assigned by other Entities that the Entity interacts with. Identifier
Unique pointer, within a certain context (namespace) to an identity.” These
definitions are significant because they underline that UID/Aadhaar is an
identifier and not a conventional identity proof.
Satyanarayana who was
the member of the Task Force that authored the above mentioned report finds
mention at page no. 46-47 of the report Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Information Technology that examined the work of Department of Electronics and
Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications and Information
Technology, asked about the surveillance by National Security Agency (NSA) of
the US. It states that in the context of privacy of data, the Committee desired
to know the Department’s stand on the issue of surveillance by US and
interception of data sent through e-mails. To this, Satyanarayana, as
Secretary, DeitY, responded during the evidence as under:-“Sir, about the US
surveillance issue, there has been a debate, as you are aware, this morning in
the Rajya Sabha itself and the hon. Minister has addressed this issue. He also
emphasised that as far as the Government data and Government mails are
concerned, the policy, the copy of which I have given to the Committee earlier,
is going to address a large part of it. Hopefully, by the end of this year, if
it is implemented, the things will be absolutely safe and secure…x.x.x.x…In the
reply, the Hon. Minister also said that we have expressed our serious concern
about the reported leakages and in the name of surveillance, the data that has
been secured from various private sources, internet resources by the US
Government. We have expressed it formally to the Government of the US and also
during the Secretary of State’s visit a few weeks ago in India, this has been
reinforced on a person to person basis.”
He added, “We have been
assured that whatever data has been gathered by them for surveillance relates
only to the metadata. It has been reiterated and stated at the highest level of
the US President that that only the metadata has been accessed, which is, the
origin of the message and the receiving point, the destination and the route
through which it has gone, but not the actual content itself. This has been
reiterated by them, but we expressed that any incursion into the content will
not be tolerated and is not tolerable from Indian stand and point of view. That
has been mentioned very clearly and firmly by our Government.”
In effect, the
Government of India has formally communicated to Government US that India has
no problem if they conduct surveillance for metadata in fact it is acceptable
and tolerable but “incursion into the content will not be tolerated and is not
tolerable.”
The Parliamentary
Committee observes, “While taking note of the Department’s stand on the recent
instances of surveillance and interception of data (though only meta-data) by
other countries, that incursion into the content of the country’s data will not
be tolerated, the Committee is of the strong opinion that the Department should
have exercised enough caution so that such a situation was not allowed to occur
at the first instance. Further, the Committee feels that the Department should
be extremely vigilant and cautious in terms of safety as well as in terms of
policy with different countries so as to avoid such leakage and interception of
sensitive data in the name of surveillance. The Committee, therefore, strongly
recommends the Department to take remedial measures and come out with a policy
which should be implemented stringently so as to obviate recurrence of such
instances.” MeitY which has been formed by giving the status of ministry to the
Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has been
misleading the State Governments, media and the citizens. It must be remembered
that the idea of UID was incubated in this very Department. It is evident that
Satyanarayana and this Department has no problem in sharing meta data of
Indians to foreign agencies.
Nilekani refers to
Vijay Madan who was the UIDAI CEO. Notably, Madan made false claims in a
presentation titled “Digital ID for Benefit and Service Delivery to Billion
Plus People” in the ‘Special Session on National ID Programs’ at the
International Joint Conference on Biometrics held during 29th September – 2nd
October 2014 at Clearwater, Florida, USA. He claimed that “Security and Privacy of personal information ensured” by UIDAI
in its implementation of UID/Adhaar project. This claim is an exercise in misrepresentation. Given the fact that some
91,000 of USA’s classified pages reached the website of Wikileaks in August
2010 reveals that such claims of security and privacy are mere empty claims
with no privacy law in the country. The Ministry of Planning, the nodal
ministry for UID/aadhaar informed the Parliamentary Standing Committee that
concerns sharing of data, surveillance and profiling is being addressed by a
proposed legislation on privacy. The committee observed that the enactment of
such data protection law is a “pre-requisite for any law that deals with
large-scale collection of information from individuals and its linkages across
separate databases.” This promised law has not been enacted till date. Notably,
till date there is no data protection and privacy protection law in the
country. Thus, the claim of UIDAI and Nilekani remains a bogus claim.
Nilekani forgot mention the name of his first
Mission Director. It is relevant to observe that the letterhead of the UIDAI’s
Director General under Nilekani, Ram Sewak Sharma revealed his personal email
ID as rssharma3@gmail.com. The question is who authorized the UIDAI’s
Director General to use Google’s email account? Is it the case that UIDAI does
have its own email account? After relinquishing his post at UIDAI to join as Chief
Secretary, Government of Jharkhand, did Sharma surrender his email ID to UIDAI?
Currently, Sharma is the Chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India
(TRAI). Prior to this assignment, he worked as the Secretary, Department of
Electronics and Information Technology after his tenure as Chief Secretary,
Government of Jharkhand where is promoted UID/Aadhaar project enthusiastically
using the same Google’s email account. UIDAI officials, Nilekani and Sharma were/are
privy to massive trove of communications about the inner workings of the world’s
biggest biometric database project aimed at creating a Centralized Identities
Data Repository (CIDR) of all the UID/Aadhaar Numbers and related aspects of nation’s
diplomacy, national security and personal sensitive information of present and
future Indians. The email accounts of Nilekani and Sharma must be investigated
to ascertain all the locations around the world from which it has been accessed
especially in the light of disclosures about the controversy surrounding use of
private email account by Hillary Clinton who began using it as “a matter of a
convenience" disregarding the advice of tech experts who didn’t allow
personal email accounts to be installed on government-issued devices. Her official
communications included thousands of emails that would retroactively be marked
classified by the US State Department. This issue was raised vociferously by
Donald Trump, the President of USA because it compromised USA’s national
security.
The fact that one of the
senior most official of UIDAI chose to receive such sensitive information on
the server of Google, a private company, is a threat to national security and
privacy of Indians. This company is regulated by US laws and has been working
in collusion with foreign intelligence agencies. The authorities in the US,
where Gmail is headquartered, can legally access the information on the server
of Google without a court warrant and without any civil and criminal liability.
The Indian government will remain in dark about it. In fact US’ Cyber
Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) make the exchange of electronic
information between Internet Service Providers and the government of US
possible. The use of Gmail account
demonstrates the lack of professionalism of UIDAI, which has been given the
task of handling the database of the personal sensitive information of Indians.
This act of omission and commission merits attention. Such gullibility of
ministers, Secretaries and Chief Secretaries besides other IAS and IPS officers
in particular and officials in general is inexcusable. This merits high level
probe.
Nilekani also refers to
Ajay Bhushan Pandey, the current CEO of UIDAI. Pandey claimed that “At least
from the UIDAI side, we have not said it shall be mandatory.” If it indeed true
that UID/Aadhaar is not being made mandatory by UIDAI then MeitY should have withdrawn
the letter to Secretary Department of Defence Production and other departments,
agencies and State Governments. Given the fact that he has not done so demonstrates
that articulations of UIDAI are equivocal and questionable. It has compromised
national security and the personal sensitive information of present and future
Presidents, Prime Ministers, judges, legislators and officials handling sensitive
assignments besides all the Indians.
Contrary to the claims
of the promoters of biometric Unique
Identification (UID)/Aadhaar like Nandan Nilekani that “Millions of people without any ID, now have an ID”, the fact is
that of all
the Aadhaar numbers issued to Indian residents till date – 99.97 per cent had pre-existing
identification (ID) documents. This has been revealed in a reply to an
application under Right to Information (RTI) Act by Unique Identification
Authority of India (UIDAI), Union Ministry of Electronics and Information
Technology (MeitY). The enclosed reply reveals that out of the 83.5 crore UID/Aadhaar
numbers issued till then, only 2.19 lakh residents (0.03 per cent) have been
given numbers based on the introduction by the introducer system because they
did not have a pre-existing ID. This
proves that that ‘an inability to prove identity” has not a major barrier to access
benefits and subsidies.
Contrary to claims of
the promoters of UID/Aadhaar about
there being a cumulative saving of 50,000 crores that was being
diverted from genuine beneficiaries, as per the minutes of the meeting of
Committee of Secretaries (CoS) held under the Chairmanship of Cabinet Secretary
on 23 November, 2015 on the subject of “Implementation of DBT in Government
Schemes”, there was an annual subsidy saving of Rs 91 crore. DBT stands for
Direct Benefits Transfer. The minutes of the meeting is dated November 30,
2015.
A bizarre situation is
emerging where citizens chose a government that was supposed to represent them
but their government is undertaking the task of coercively biometrically
authenticating whether or not those it represents are indeed those who they
claim to be. It ends up breaking the sacrosanct social contract between the
citizen and the State in an unprecedented act of breach of trust. The attempt to undertake convergence of all the
sensitive databases of Indians and the confidence of promoters of UID/Aadhaar in
the irreversibility of their efforts has thrown as yet an unmet open political
challenge to the opposition parties and informed citizens.
For Details: Dr
Gopal Krishna, Member, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL), who has been
working on the subject of Big Data and biometric-digital surveillance
technologies. He had appeared before the Parliamentary Standing on Finance that
examined and trashed Aadhaar Bill, 2010. He is editor of www.toxicswatch.org
Mb: 9818089660, 08227816731, E-mail: 1715krishna@gmail.com
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