Bihar Govt should withdraw from biometric identification scheme of central government after Supreme Court order

State must withdraw from MoU it signed with UIDAI

Manifestoes of political parties must make their stand clear on scrapping
of Biometric Identification ahead of elections

Negative coalition of bankers and surveillance technology companies rearing
its heads against citizens’ rights

Bihar Govt should withdraw from biometric identification scheme of central government after Supreme Court order on the ulterior motives behind ‘voluntary’ 12 digits Biometric Aadhaar/ Unique Identification (UID) Number for creating a Central Identities Data Registry (CIDR) of ‘usual residents’ of India and for "doing government process re-engineering" through its order dated September 23, 2013. The questionable intentions of Planning Commission’s Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) face yet another legal and constitutional scrutiny. UIDAI has failed in the earlier examinations. Bihar Govt's must withdraw from attached questionable Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) it signed with UIDAI. 

A compelling logic has emerged for the Bihar Government to put a stay on the execution of the aadhaar related projects in the state. UIDAI had signed a MoU with Bihar Government on August 20, 2010 without any legal and constitutional mandate. The MoU signed by UIDAI for implementing the UID scheme has become of doubtful legality.

Indian National Congress, non-Congress parties and the opposition parties appear complicit in the unconstitutional, illegal and illegitimate exercise because they failed to demand its scrapping and maintained silence when in breach of trust Congress ruled states and centre
attempted to make it mandatory.

It may be recollected that Punjab and Haryana High Court bench headed by Chief Justice A K Sikri passed an order on March 2, 2013 after hearing a matter challenging a circular making Aadhaar mandatory. The moment Court raised questions of laws, the circular was withdrawn by the central government. The decision underlined that UIDAI is legally assailable and indefensible.

UIDAI and related projects treats every Indian as a subject of surveillance unlike UK which abandoned a similar project (that used to be cited by Wipro Ltd in promotion of UID) because it is "untested, unreliable and unsafe technology” and the” possible risk to the safety and security of citizens.” It was recorded by Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) on Finance that submitted a report to both the Houses of Parliament on December 13, 2011 trashing the biometric identification project and the post facto legislation to legalize UIDAI and its acts of omission and commission since January 28, 2009 till the passage of The National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010. Notably, UK Home Secretary explained that they were abandoning the project because it would otherwise be 'intrusive bullying' by the state, and that the government intended to be the 'servant' of the people, and not their 'master'.

The silence of Wipro Ltd which had prepared the ‘Strategic Vision on the
UIDAI Project’ document and submitted to the processes committee of the
Planning Commission set up in July 2006 is deafening. This document too
seems to be missing from public domain.

Supreme Court order vindicates the Punjab and Haryana High Court order, PSC
report and the Statement of Concern dated September 28, 2010 issued by 17
eminent citizens including Justice VR Krishna Iyer, Prof Romila Thapar, SR
Sankaran, Justice AP Shah, KG Kannabiran, Bezwada Wilson, Aruna Roy and
Prof Upendra Baxi seeking halting of the project. The Parliamentary
Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation is also seized with the
compliant on “Subordinate Legislation for Biometric Identity Card NRIC and
Aadhhar/UID IS illegal & illegitimate and Constitutional, Legal, Historical
& Technological Reasons Against UID/Aadhaar Scheme on 18.3.2013."

State Governments especially those ruled by non-Congress party are so deaf
they do not seem to hear even when the verdict shouts. In the aftermath of
Supreme Court’s order State Governments must withdraw from the MoU they
signed with UIDAI.

All the non-Congress ruled States are opposed to National Counter Terrorism
Centre (NCTC) citing erosion of State’s autonomy but quite strangely so far
they have failed to see the link between CIDR, National Intelligence Grid
(NATGRID), National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) and Sam Pitroda’s
Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations (PIII) which are part of
the same political culture that leaves intelligence agencies beyond the
ambit of legislative scrutiny.

The entire issue is quite grave because the genocidal idea of biometric
identification is linked with the holocaust witnessed in Germany. Such
identification exercises have rightly been abandoned in UK, Australia,
China, USA and France.  Notably, Nandan Nilekani has admitted, "To answer
the question about what is the biggest risk" of centralized database of
biometric identification, he said "in some sense, you run the risk of
creating a single point of failure also" in his talk at the World Bank in
Washington on April 24, 2013. No one knows who would be held legally liable
for such failures. Who is being held accountable for leakage of data from
UIDAI at present?

Notably, World Bank’s President who introduced Nilekani at the lecture
expressed his patronage for the project. It is not surprising given the
fact that essentially it is part of its eTransform Initiative launched in
April 2010 for 14 developing countries in partnership with transnational
companies like L1, IBM and governments of France and South Korea.

It is the inevitability of such failure that led to the extermination of a
large human population in Germany in the 1940s. In the case of CIDR and
linked initiatives it is not the failure instead convergence of data,
tracking, profiling, tagging and the violation of norms of privacy is
embedded in its design.  Nilekani explained at his lecture at the Bank,
"First of all, this is not an ID card project. There is no card. There is a
number. It's a virtual number on the cloud, and we don't give a physical
card. We do send you a physical letter with your number, which you keep in
your pocket, but the real value of this is the number on the cloud". The
biometric number is an identifier which is used to "authenticate" and
verify whether or not the person is what the person claims to be. The
ridiculous thing about the Congressmen in general and supporters of the
project in particular is that they do not even know as to what is aadhaar?
On January 31, 2013, it came to light that members of Union Cabinet were
unaware as whether it is a number or a card. Instead of facing the issue
upfront, a Group of Ministers was set up to resolve it but no one knows
whether it has been resolved.

It also reflects how undemocratic Indian National Congress is. The decision
to impose biometric aadhaar number was autocratically and unilaterally
decided without taking consent from even its own party members who are then
expected to defend this indefensible project. Nilekani has misguided the
party in this regard.

Almost five years of advertising and marketing by UIDAI with help of a
negative coalition of bankers, biometric technology companies and a section
of mainstream media that holds rights of citizens in contempt created an
illusion among the uninformed citizenry that what pre-existing 15 identity
proofs could not do, this illegitimate and illegal biometric identifier
will be able to do.

The advocates and supporters of biometric identification who are part of
the negative coalition that unconditionally and blindly supports linking of
fish baits for trapping the poor in the biometric database are game for
turning the all the Indians into guniea pigs for an  experiment that has
resulted in incineration of human beings in the past.  The fact of this
experimentation is revealed from what Nandan Nilekani said in his speech at
the Centre for Global Development, Washington. He said, “Our view was that
there was bound to be opposition. That is a given…we said in any case there
is going to be a coalition of opponents. So is there a way to create a
positive coalition of people who have a stake in its success? So, one of
the big things here is that there is a huge coalition of, you know,
organisations, governments, banks, companies, others who have a stake now
in its future. So, create a positive coalition that has the power to
overpower or deal with anyone who opposes it.” Positive coalition of
progressive political parties, peoples’ movements and informed citizens
must expose the collaborators of undemocratic biometric technology
companies, bankers and NGOs and give a befitting reply to them. They lost
in UK, Australia, China, France and USA; they will lose in India too.

Nilekani’s method of reasoning is a case study, he says, "We came to the
conclusion that if we take sufficient data, biometric data of an
individual, then that person's biometric will be unique across a billion
people. Now we have to find that out. We haven't done it yet. So we'll
discover it as we go along" on April 23, 2013. At his lecture at World Bank
on April 24, 2013, he said, “nobody has done this before, so we are going
to find out soon whether it will work or not”. No one can tell as to what
is his premise and what is the inference or how is inference is deduced
from the premise he has articulated.

Notably, the Strategy Overview document of the UIDAI said that "enrolment
will not be mandated" but added, "This will not, however, preclude
governments or registrars from mandating enrolment". It must be noted that
Nandan Nilekani headed several committees whose recommendations made
Aadhaar mandatory.

Tricked by the marketing blitzkrieg, some political parties are wary of
taking a position that would appear to be against pro-poor schemes not
realizing that come what may the real beneficiary of this biometric
identification is UIDAI which wants to meet its target of 60 crores of
Indians by 2014.

Amidst leakage of files from the Prime Minister’s office and leakage of
public money in scam after scams in the Indian National Congress led
Government, the claim of attempting to reduce leakage in the system by
using questionable plumbers like Nilekani does not inspire even an iota of
confidence. Nilekani admitted at his lecture the Centre for Global
Development in Washington in April 2013 that UIDAI has "created huge
opportunity for fingerprint scanners, iris readers". The purchase of these
machines with money is also a leakage that merits probe. Leakage can be
plugged by rigorous implementation of Right to Information Act and
decentralization of decision making instead of adopting a centralization
approach and technological quick fixes.

The entire Indian and international media was taken for a ride regarding a
so called turf war between the Ministry of Home Affairs and UIDAI which
media was made to understand that got resolved by diving the Indian
population in two parts of 61 crore and 60 crore for coverage under
National Population Register (NPR) which also generates Aadhaar number and
UIDAI. The fact is the terms of reference of the UIDAI mandated it "take
necessary steps to ensure collation of National Population Register (NPR)
with UID (as per approved strategy)", to "identify new partner/user
agencies", to "issue necessary instructions to agencies that undertake
creation of databases… (to) enable collation and correlation with UID and
its partner databases" and UIDAI “shall own and operate the database". The
executive notification dated January 28, 2009 that set up UIDAI mentions
this. The entire exercise appears to have been stage managed.

Nilekani has recommended Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for the
"unique identification" of vehicles. If the real motive is not surveillance
then how is that UIDAI Chairman wears several hats like an intelligence
person to undertake unauthorized and illegitimate tracking.

On June 29, 2013, Nilekani reportedly revealed that they were in
preliminary discussions with embassies to use the UID number to “simplify
visa application procedures”. Isn’t passport a sovereign document? Notably,
Nilekani refers to Aadhaar as akin to internal passport. For passport,
there is Passport Act, under what Act is this ‘internal passport’ being
promoted?

Supreme Court order must be looked at in the light of what of Government of
India’s approach paper on privacy states. It says, “Data privacy and the
need to protect personal information is almost never a concern when data is
stored in a decentralised manner. Data that is maintained in silos is
largely useless outside that silo and consequently has a low likelihood of
causing any damage.  However, all this is likely to change with the
implementation of the UID Project. One of the inevitable consequences of
the UID Project will be that the UID Number will unify multiple databases.
As more and more agencies of the government sign on to the UID Project, the
UID Number will become the common thread that links all those databases
together. Over time, private enterprise could also adopt the UID Number as
an identifier for the purposes of the delivery of their services or even
for enrolment as a customer. Once this happens, the separation of data that
currently exists between multiple databases will vanish.” On this ground
alone, the project should be abandoned as it concerns not only the present
generation but future generations as well.

It is noteworthy that Attorney General of India had submitted to the
Parliamentary Committee that UIDAI will function only till the passage of
the UID Bill. The Bill was not passed. Now the UIDAI should seize to exist
because it is legally invalid. How can a notification of Planning
Commission be deemed legally valid when even the ordinance issued by the
President of India become invalid if the Bill is not passed within six
months.

A Round Table on the Unique Identification (UID) project and Union Home Ministry's National Population Register (NPR) was organised on January 10, 2012 at AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies (ANISS), Patna. It was co-organised jointly by A N Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) and Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL). This meeting was a follow up to the Round Table on Unique Identification (UID) project & Bihar Govt's role held on 3rd January, 2011, the National Seminar on Idea of Unique Identification (UID) Project held on February 21, 2011 held in the state capital. Several eminent intellectuals from various sections of society expressed their concerns about the effect of this project on the liberty of citizens and sovereignty of the country.

It had emerged that journalists appear to have been compelled to accept biometric identification in the offices where they work. They have been made to accept it as a fait accompli. As a consequence they have not reported about violation of privacy rights due to biometric identification of citizens and residents of India under UID and NPR.

Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL) has been pursuing a campaign
against the biometric based Unique Identification (UID)/Aadhaar Number,
National Population Register (NPR), National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID),
National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) and Direct Cash Transfer since 2010. It had appeared before the
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance that trashed the UID Bill on
December 13, 2011 in its report to the Parliament. It was an applicant
before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which in an order date
December 27, 2012 addressed to Secretary, Union Ministry of Home Affairs
communicated human rights concerns regarding UID and RFID submitted to it
by CFCL. CFCL is an applicant before the Parliamentary Standing Committee
on Subordinate Legislation. CFCL is also an applicant before the Press
Council of India on the complicity of some media organizations in the
matter of enrolment for legally questionable biometric identification.

*For Details*: Gopal Krishna, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL),
Mb:8227816731,  09818089660 E-mail:gopalkrishna1715@gmail.com