Centre for Internet & Society

Privacy Concerns Overshadow Monetary Benefits of Aadhaar Scheme

Privacy Concerns Overshadow Monetary Benefits of Aadhaar Scheme

Posted by Pranesh Prakash and Amber Sinha at Mar 17, 2016 04:10 PM |

Since its inception in 2009, the Aadhaar system has been shrouded in controversy over issues of privacy, security and viability. It has been implemented without a legislative mandate and has resulted in a PIL in the Supreme Court, which referred it to a Constitution bench. On Friday, it kicked up more dust when the Lok Sabha passed a Bill to give statutory backing to the unique identity number scheme.

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List of Recommendations on the Aadhaar Bill, 2016 - Letter Submitted to the Members of Parliament

Posted by Amber Sinha, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Sunil Abraham, and Vanya Rakesh at Mar 16, 2016 11:50 AM |

On Friday, March 11, the Lok Sabha passed the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016. The Bill was introduced as a money bill and there was no public consultation to evaluate the provisions therein even though there are very serious ramifications for the Right to Privacy and the Right to Association and Assembly. Based on these concerns, and numerous others, we submitted an initial list of recommendations to the Members of Parliaments to highlight the aspects of the Bill that require immediate attention.

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Press Release, March 15, 2016: The New Bill Makes Aadhaar Compulsory!

Posted by Amber Sinha at Mar 16, 2016 10:11 AM |

We published and circulated the following press release on March 15, 2016, to highlight the fact that the Section 7 of the Aadhaar Bill, 2016 states that authentication of the person using her/his Aadhaar number can be made mandatory for the purpose of disbursement of government subsidies, benefits, and services; and in case the person does not have an Aadhaar number, s/he will have to apply for Aadhaar enrolment.

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Press Release, March 11, 2016: The Law cannot Fix what Technology has Broken!

Posted by Japreet Grewal and Sunil Abraham at Mar 16, 2016 09:55 AM |

We published and circulated the following press release on March 11, 2016, as the Lok Sabha passed the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016. This Bill was proposed by finance minister, Mr. Arun Jaitley to give legislative backing to Aadhaar, being implemented by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

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An Urgent Need for the Right to Privacy

Posted by Sumandro Chattapadhyay at Mar 16, 2016 09:40 AM |

Along with a group of individuals and organisations from academia and civil society, we have drafted and are signatories to an open letter addressed to the Union government and urging the same to "urgently take steps to uphold the constitutional basis to the right to privacy and fulfil it’s constitutional and international obligations." Here we publish the text of the open letter. Please follow the link below to support it by joining the signatories.

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The New Aadhaar Bill in Plain English

Posted by Amber Sinha, Vanya Rakesh and Vipul Kharbanda at Mar 11, 2016 04:40 AM |

We have put together a plain English version of the The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016.

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Are we Losing the Right to Privacy and Freedom of Speech on Indian Internet?

Posted by Amber Sinha at Mar 10, 2016 07:05 PM |

The article was published in DNA on March 10, 2016.

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Aadhaar Bill fails to incorporate suggestions by the Standing Committee

Posted by Amber Sinha at Mar 10, 2016 03:20 AM |

In 2011, a standing committee report led by Yashwant Sinha had been scathing in its indictments of the Aadhaar BIll introduced by the UPA government. Five years later, the NDA government has introduced a new bill which is a rehash of the same. I look at the concerns raised by the committee report, none of which have been addressed by the new bill.

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A comparison of the 2016 Aadhaar Bill, and the 2010 NIDAI Bill

Posted by Vanya Rakesh at Mar 09, 2016 04:08 AM |

This blog post does a clause-by-clause comparison of the provisions of National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010 and the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016

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Aadhaar: Still Too Many Problems

Posted by Pranesh Prakash at Mar 07, 2016 05:00 PM |

While one wishes to welcome govt’s attempt to bring Aadhaar within a legislative framework, the fact is there are too many problems that still remain unaddressed for one to be optimistic.

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Flaws in the UIDAI Process

Posted by Hans Varghese Mathews at Mar 06, 2016 10:40 AM |

The accuracy of biometric identification depends on the chance of a false positive: the probability that the identifiers of two persons will match. Individuals whose identifiers match might be termed duplicands. When very many people are to be identified success can be measured by the (low) proportion of duplicands. The Government of India is engaged upon biometrically identifying the entire population of India. An experiment performed at an early stage of the programme has allowed us to estimate the chance of a false positive: and from that to estimate the proportion of duplicands. For the current population of 1.2 billion the expected proportion of duplicands is 1/121, a ratio which is far too high.

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Sean McDonald - Ebola: A Big Data Disaster

Sean McDonald - Ebola: A Big Data Disaster

We are proud to initiate the CIS Papers series with a fascinating exploration of humanitarian use of big data and its discontents by Sean McDonald, FrontlineSMS, in the context of utilisation of Call Detail Records for public health response during the Ebola crisis in Liberia. The paper highlights the absence of a dialogue around the significant legal risks posed by the collection, use, and international transfer of personally identifiable data and humanitarian information, and the grey areas around assumptions of public good. The paper calls for a critical discussion around the experimental nature of data modeling in emergency response due to mismanagement of information has been largely emphasized to protect the contours of human rights.

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Comments by the Centre for Internet and Society on the Report of the Committee on Medium Term Path on Financial Inclusion

Posted by Vipul Kharbanda at Feb 27, 2016 08:00 AM |

Apart from item-specific suggestions, CIS would like to make one broad comment with regard to the suggestions dealing with linking of Aadhaar numbers with bank accounts. Aadhaar is increasingly being used by the government in various departments as a means to prevent fraud, however there is a serious dearth of evidence to suggest that Aadhaar linkage actually prevents leakages in government schemes. The same argument would be applicable when Aadhaar numbers are sought to be utilized to prevent leakages in the banking sector.

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‘A Good Day for the Internet Everywhere': India Bans Differential Data Pricing

Posted by Subhashish Panigrahi at Feb 25, 2016 01:21 AM |

India distinguished itself as a global leader on network neutrality on February 8, when regulators officially banned “differential pricing”, a process through which telecommunications service providers could or charge discriminatory tariffs for data services offered based on content.

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Net Neutrality Advocates Rejoice As TRAI Bans Differential Pricing

India would not see any more Free Basics advertisements on billboards with images of farmers and common people explaining how much they benefited from this Facebook project.

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World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development

Posted by Pranesh Prakash at Feb 17, 2016 05:05 PM |

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) had published a book in 2014 that examines free speech, expression and media development. The chapter contains a Foreword by Irina Bokova, Director General, UNESCO. Pranesh Prakash contributed to Independence: Introduction - Global Media Chapter. The book was edited by Courtney C. Radsch.

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Internet Freedom

Internet Freedom

Posted by Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda at Feb 15, 2016 02:51 AM |

The modern medium of the web is an open-sourced, democratic world in which equality is an ideal, which is why what is most important is Internet freedom.

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A Case for Greater Privacy Paternalism?

Posted by Amber Sinha at Feb 14, 2016 12:20 PM |

This is the second part of a series of three articles exploring the issues with the privacy self management framework and potential alternatives.

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There is No Such Thing as Free Basics

Posted by Subhashish Panigrahi at Feb 14, 2016 11:37 AM |

India would not see the rain of Free Basics advertisements on billboards with images of farmers and common people explaining how much they could benefit from this Firefox project. Because the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has taken a historical step by banning the differential pricing without discriminating services.

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Database on Big Data and Smart Cities International Standards

Posted by Vanya Rakesh at Feb 11, 2016 03:49 PM |

The Centre for Internet and Society is in the process of mapping international standards specifically around Big Data, IoT and Smart Cities. Here is a living document containing a database of some of these key globally accepted standards.

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