Internet Governance Blog
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 — last modified Mar 21, 2016 08:50 AMOn 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.
Press Release, March 15, 2016: The New Bill Makes Aadhaar Compulsory!
— by Amber Sinha — last modified Mar 16, 2016 10:11 AMWe 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.
Press Release, March 11, 2016: The Law cannot Fix what Technology has Broken!
— by Japreet Grewal and Sunil Abraham — last modified Mar 16, 2016 10:10 AMWe 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).
An Urgent Need for the Right to Privacy
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Mar 17, 2016 07:40 AMAlong 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.
The New Aadhaar Bill in Plain English
— by Amber Sinha, Vanya Rakesh and Vipul Kharbanda — last modified Mar 11, 2016 04:41 AMWe have put together a plain English version of the The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016.
Are we Losing the Right to Privacy and Freedom of Speech on Indian Internet?
— by Amber Sinha — last modified Mar 16, 2016 02:44 PMThe article was published in DNA on March 10, 2016.
Aadhaar Bill fails to incorporate suggestions by the Standing Committee
— by Amber Sinha — last modified Mar 10, 2016 03:58 PMIn 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.
A comparison of the 2016 Aadhaar Bill, and the 2010 NIDAI Bill
— by Vanya Rakesh — last modified Mar 09, 2016 04:08 AMThis 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
Aadhaar: Still Too Many Problems
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Apr 06, 2016 03:31 PMWhile 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.
Flaws in the UIDAI Process
— by Hans Varghese Mathews — last modified Mar 06, 2016 10:40 AMThe 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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