Centre for Internet & Society

Surveillance Project

by Sunil Abraham

The Aadhaar project’s technological design and architecture is an unmitigated disaster and no amount of legal fixes in the Act will make it any better.

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Too Clever By Half: Strengthening India’s Smart Cities Plan with Human Rights Protection

by Vanya Rakesh

The data involved in planning for urbanized and networked cities are currently flawed and politically-inflected. Therefore, we must ensure that basic human rights are not violated in the race to make cities “smart”.

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The National Privacy Principles

by Pooja Saxena and Amber Sinha

In this infographic, we try to break down the National Privacy Principles developed by the Group of Experts on Privacy led by the Former Chief Justice A.P. Shah in 2012.

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Vulnerabilities in the UIDAI Implementation Not Addressed by the Aadhaar Bill, 2016

by Pooja Saxena and Amber Sinha

In this infographic, we document the various issues in the Aadhaar enrolment process implemented by the UIDAI, and highlight the vulnerabilities that the Aadhaar Bill, 2016 does not address. The infographic is based on Vidushi Marda’s article 'Data Flow in the Unique Identification Scheme of India,' and is designed by Pooja Saxena, with inputs from Amber Sinha.

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Analysis of Aadhaar Act in the Context of A.P. Shah Committee Principles

by Vipul Kharbanda

Whilst there are a number of controversies relating to the Aadhaar Act including the fact that it was introduced in a manner so as to circumvent the majority of the opposition in the upper house of the Parliament and that it was rushed through the Lok Sabha in a mere eight days, in this paper we shall discuss the substantial aspects of the Act in relation to privacy concerns which have been raised by a number of experts. In October 2012, the Group of Experts on Privacy constituted by the Planning Commission under the chairmanship of Justice AP Shah Committee submitted its report which listed nine principles of privacy which all legislations, especially those dealing with personal should adhere to. In this paper, we shall discuss how the Aadhaar Act fares vis-à-vis these nine principles.

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Privacy Concerns Overshadow Monetary Benefits of Aadhaar Scheme

by Pranesh Prakash and Amber Sinha

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

by Amber Sinha, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Sunil Abraham, and Vanya Rakesh

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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