The Database State is an exercise in outsourcing of
government through technologies that make individuals subservient to admittedly
undemocratic entities wherein biometric identification is being made a
pre-condition for citizens to have any rights.
Database
State, a report from
the UK revealed how the old maxim, 'If
you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear' has been given
a very public burial. The report states, ”In October 2007, Her Majesty's Revenue
and Customs lost two discs containing a copy of the entire child benefit
database. Suddenly issues of privacy and data security
were on the front page of most newspapers and leading the TV news bulletins.
The millions of people affected by this data loss, who may have thought they
had nothing to hide, were shown that they do have much to fear from the
failures of the database state.” Likewise, creating database containing
biometrics is a giant leap towards authoritarian control by data mining companies.
It turns citizens into subjects and suspected criminals, who can be kept under
leash by control over sensitive data. Through convergence each data can be
transformed into sensitive data.
If
consent for it is granted by uninformed citizens then citizens become a number
on a computer of a state actor or non–state actor engaged in ‘welfare’
services. This would automatically create a file on each citizen. In an effort
to appear harmless, the claims are that the file would contain very little
information like but as has now come to light it is being linked to ‘preventing
terrorism’, ‘stopping crime’ or ‘protecting children’ etc. This in turn creates
logic for profiling and tracking citizens based on
their financial transactions, mobility, religion, caste,
region, orientations, health records and driving record.
Right
to privacy and freedom belong to citizens by right. It is not granted by
government. A government is the servant of the citizens, not its master.
Governments are supposed to seek the permission to
limit these rights in certain circumstances. It signals a break-down of a democratic government if it chooses to engage in
indiscriminate surveillance of citizens or to impose a
system of compulsory identification or to open a file on each citizen or to
criminalise citizens who refuse to comply.
When
political candidates of the ruling party and its allies stood up for elections
and sought votes did they seek the mandate to put the voters under
surveillance?
The
'database state' is the tendency of the state and non-state actors to use
computers and biometrics to manage society by putting people under watch by
mouthing benevolent schemes and excuses.
Databasing
people is akin to modern day enslavement by those who are wedded to the faith
in property-based democracy. Slavery by whatever name is wrong on principle.
Non-state
actors have prevailed on state agencies to adopt "Transformational
Government" initiative. It might sound good unless one comprehends that
what is being transformed is not government but it is power over citizens under
the dictates of non-state actors.
This
was attempted by UK’s Tony Blair government, which misled the world and its own
citizens about Iraq having nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme
although it knew that it was not true. Not surprisingly, the British citizens
could see through the fraudulent misrepresentation and voted for the coalition
of David Cameron-Nick Clegg. As UK's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said,
“This government will end the culture of spying on its citizens. It is
outrageous that decent, law-abiding people are regularly treated as if they
have something to hide. It has to stop. So there will be no ID card scheme. No
national identity register, a halt to second generation biometric passports” in
the British House of Commons.
Clegg
added, “We won't hold your internet and email records when there is just no
reason to do so. Britain must not be a country where our children grow up so
used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question.
Schools will not take children's fingerprints without even asking their
parent's consent. This will be a government that is proud when British citizens
stand up against illegitimate advances of the state.”
But
like Sonia Gandhi-led coalition government, Narendra Modi-led coalition
government in India chooses to follow the discredited path of Tony Blair and
his UK's Identity Cards Act, 2006. Both, Blair and UKID
Act have been abandoned by voters in UK.
Given
the fact that ‘radical restructuring of the security architecture at the
national level’ is underway, when Nandan Nilekani, as the chairman of Unique
Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was asked as to how tracking of
citizens can get facilitated once different databases
like National Population Register (NPR), National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID),
National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), Crime and Criminal Tracking
Network System (CCTNS), Multi-Agency Centre (MAC), central monitoring system
(CMS) , Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC), National Investigation Agency
(NIA), national cyber coordination centre (NCCC), national critical information
infrastructure protection centre (NCIIPC), telecom security directorate, Public
Information Infrastructure and Innovations and UID are converged, you can
actually track all the information. He responded saying, “I don't want to talk
about that.” His silence remains deafening. But intelligence agencies be it
UIDAI or any or any of it incarnations are known for adopting such stances.
Under
NATGRID, 21 sets of databases is being networked to achieve quick, seamless and
secure access to desired information for intelligence/enforcement agencies, it
is quite clear that the biometric databases under creation are meant for such
agencies in India and elsewhere. The Rules made under the Information
Technology Act, 2000 in April 2011 provide access to any data held by any
"body corporate" in India. This does not seem to apply
to body corporate of foreign origin.
In
such a backdrop, there is a compelling logic in resisting attempts “to merge
the Election ID cards with UID”. Such an exercise would mean rewriting and
engineering the electoral ecosystem with the unconstitutional and illegal use
of biometric technology in a context where electoral finance has become source
of corruption and black money in the country. This would lead to linking of
biometric UID/Aadhaar, election ID and electronic voting machines (EVMs), which
are not as innocent and as politically neutral as it has been made out to be.
It is noteworthy that all EVMs have a UID number as well. This will amount to
electoral surveillance. Aadhaar Act paves the way for merger of UID/Aadhaar
with Voter ID.
Surveillance
is a “shameful act” of supervising and imposing discipline on a subject through
a hierarchy system of policing. Michel Foucault, the author of 'Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison' examined the systems of social power through
the lens of the 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the originator of the
now iconic Panopticon. This Panopticon was/is a design for a prison in which
the inmate's cells are arranged in a circular fashion around a central guard
tower. The architectural configuration allows for a single guard's gaze to view
all inmates, but prevents those inmates from knowing exactly when they are
being watched.
It
was aptly observed, “The major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the
inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic
functioning of power.” This design is a “generalised model of functioning and a
way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday lives of men.”
In
initiatives like biometric identification the subject, the citizen is seen but
he/she does not see. He/she is the object of information, but never a subject
in communication. Foucault's Panoptic model is quite valid for biometric
database because these databases are meant to ensure real time tracking and
profiling of citizens and turns them into subjects and in a slave like
situation. Tumultuous colonial history of the technologies associated with
surveillance reveal that the origins of surveillance happened during free trade
of slaves.
Biometric
identification treats Indian citizens worse than slaves. It is an act of
identification prior to any act of omission and commission. It is a case
of a deepening of everyday surveillance. It is similar to what was done under
the Britain's Habitual Criminals Act of 1869 required police to keep an
“Alphabetical Registry” and cross-referenced “Distinctive Marks Registry. The
first held names and the latter descriptions of scars, tattoos, birthmarks,
balding, pockmarks, and other distinguishing features. This registry of marks
was systematically disaggregated into nine general categories pertaining to
regions of the body. Therefore there were files for the head and face; throat
and neck; chest; belly and groin; back and loins; arms; hands and fingers;
thighs and legs; feet and ankles.
The
proposed convergence of biometric information with financial and personal data
such as residence, employment, and medical history heralds the beginning of the
demolition of one of the most important firewalls in the structure of privacy.
Such convergence of databases poses a threat to minorities and political
opponents as they can be targeted in a situation where government is led by any
Nazi party like political formations.
Late Roger Needham, a British computer scientist aptly said, “If you think IT is the solution to your problem, then you don’t understand IT, and you don’t understand your problem either.” It sounds like he was addressing this observation to gullible citizens, political class and the proponents of UID/Aadhaar and Human DNA Profiling.
(Photo: Section 2 (g) of Aaadhaar Act 2016 defines "biometric information)
Safeguarding
of citizens' privacy and their civil liberties in the face of an unprecedented
onslaught from collection of biometric data and other related surveillance
measures that are being bulldozed by unregulated and ungovernable technology
companies by overawing the Governments through its marketing blitzkrieg is
emerging as fight between the David and the Goliath. Database State cannot be
the aim of any democratically healthy government. It is an exercise in
outsourcing of government through technologies that make individuals subservient
to admittedly undemocratic entities wherein biometric identification is being
made a pre-condition for citizens to have any rights.
In
effect, Aadhaar Act makes right to have rights dependent on being biometrically
profiled and not on constitutional guarantees and Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. This is a regressive step that takes citizens to pre-Magna Carta
days (1215 AD) or even earlier to the days prior to the declaration of Cyrus,
the Persian King (539 BC) that willed freedom for slaves. Should it not be
resisted?
The author had appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance that examined the Aadhaar Bill and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution that examined the Consumer Protection Bill. He is editor of www.toxicswatch.org and is the convener of Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties which have been working on UID/Aadhaar issue since 2010.
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