>All people criticising Aadhar for being insecure frankly don't have a real solution in place.

Criticising something doesn't necessitate me to providing a solution. It's like saying all movie critics should be good actors.

>Being an Indian citizen I know and have experienced benefit owing to Aadhar. I get subsidies from the government, one uniform identity that I can use to get important things.

Sure aadhar might have some benefits for you. But the critique is raising many points which make it incredibly dangerous and harmful in the long run. It's like using steroids to gain muscle faster, which is very harmful in the long term.

>Coming to the security part, which centralised biometric DB doesn't have risks.

Yes and those systems do get criticised so it can be improved. Also, aadhar claims to be open source, open API, run by volunteers, none of which it is. It sells your data to private services. Were you going to address that point at all?

>Mozilla being such a nice organisation with so many good initiatives. Why don't it come forward and dedicate some of its resources in helping out the Indian Government?

Indian government has a lot of resources too. It's not exactly poor. It could do a good job if it wanted to. That's not what this criticism is about.

>Wouldn't that be better than just criticising without knowing any ground reality of how things operate in India?

How do you know the author doesn't know the ground reality of things in India?

Look, criticism of a system or policy serves to ignite debate on how best we can make improvements and move forward. Rather than being snarky and getting all defensive and making silly illogical arguments, how about you contribute to the discussion by addressing the points raised in the article?

- They didn't rely on fingerprints, as they are easy to fake, without a high degree of technical sophistication

- There would not be an API for commercial services

I just want the government to be able to provide its services smoothly. I don't want random startups leaking or selling everyone's data.

There are no biometrics associated with Social Security. It's just an ID number.

Yes the government is holding your benifits hostage in order to force you to register for aadhar. This is not an inherit advantage of aadhar.

Aadhaar has nothing to do with you web activity. It's used as KYC - Know your Customer - for getting the JIO connection. It's optional, and as an alternative you can submit a xerox of any ID documents for your KYC. Most european countries require an ID document to get a mobile connection as well - Italy for example.

> Going by a similar analogy - Should a US citizen use SSN to get a home-woker-robot from a private company like (Google,SpaceX) to help with all daily chores ? BIG NO

More apt analogy would be that should a US citizen use SSN to to get a bank account at Citibank? BIG YES

> India has also been known for its infamous caste society (read prejudice) for few millenia - will unique identification help eradicate or increase the problem further ? can anybody explain which applies here and how ?

That has nothing to do with Aadhaar so I would ignore it.

> Where does the state in questions stand in corruption ratings, human development index ? very low.

It's also one of the freest countries in Asia according to Freedom House, and has robust institutions. It's the world's biggest democracy for 70 years now - during which western countries like Spain and Portugal were rules by dictators.

Please keep you condescending attitude to yourself. Indias are well informed to make an informed choice in this matter, and they have.

EDIT IN RESPONSE TO YOUR EDIT:

> How is with aadhar and facts above help prevent a state or private-company or mix-of-both-them not become big brother ?

Because Mister it's only used for KYC. Aadhaar system only stores a few attributes - Name/DOB/gender/address-if-available. That's data every goverment in this world keeps of its citizens. Do you understand now how you and Mozilla are fear mongering?

I don't get this ! What exactly is this linkage solving ? Additionally everyone who advocates this disregards the fact that there are Non-resident Indians who are required to pay taxes but they are not entitled to an Aadhaar card and resident non-Indians who also need to pay taxes who are not required to get an Aadhaar card.

Additionally, how exactly is the deduplication of the PAN database happening ? (ie: who is doing this and what information do they have access to ? eg: is it a private entity who would also benefit from knowing tax income slabs for analytics ?? ...do you really want your service providers insurance/health care/ISP/grocery provider to know the income tax slab you fit in ?)

Yet, they try every day - to over come that with whatever tools and education in front of them.

MANY people in India, aside from the brigade yelling "efficiency and progress", do not value efficiency and progress.

So they do care, and will definitely care once they realize they were sold a bum dream.

Even if this hasn't happened yet, Are there any measures in place to keep this from happening?... Ever... Irrespective of the party in power?

The current government does not even want to acknowledge the possibility let alone describe the checks and measures put in place to avoid it from happening.

Non govt agencies need your consent to get your data, if you don't want that just don't authenticate.

The article suggests that government is selling your data to private companies, which is such a big misrepresentation I wonder how Mozilla let its name be used for it. Do they not care for their reputation anymore?

Private companies can access your data only if you give them you consent by authenticating, and all they get is name/dob/gender/address-if-avialable. Which they would have anyways since you are their customer - mobile provider, bank etc.

There should be an overarching privacy law in India covering disclosure, insurance, etc; but that's a separate debate.

For the same reason a bank requires your signature. To authenticate you. But in India because we still have some illiteracy signatures won't do. That's why it uses Biometrics. This didn't come to your mind? Does it not reflect poorly on you?

> So it is a system which can be compromised by a motivated employee? What was the benefit again? Oh right stamping out corruption. Lets see how long that lasts.

Mister, in the alternative system - signature/xerox - there's no audit trail. So anyone with a pen paper can forge you signature for example. With Aadhaar you at least get notification anytime authentication happens.

You seem to believe that those who have built Aadhaar, haven't thought through all this, while you can. Classic case of arm chair analyst I may assume from you arguments.

> People praising direct benefits, was it not possible using raashan card? If your answer is well they could be fakes? Then wake up to the fact that there can be fake Aadhar cards too.

How exactly would you fake BM to get an extra Aadhaar card? Make an fake eye in a lab, and get someone at enrollment center to register that?

The problem with ration cards was that not only fakes, but also that they were not well organized sructured at all. Have you every walked into a tehsildar's office?

On top of it this data is often found floating around in many unguarded excel files all over the web.

Its trivially easy to break people into caste buckets.

I'm not entirely opposed to a UID system in India, but the way its been legislated and implemented in the last few years is absolutely disgusting.

India has absolutely 0 laws when it comes to privacy. Who is accountable when your data is leaked? Its literally upto the Aadhar committee whether they prosecute any leak of data.

that's the game played; radical programs are raised and enforced in environments where it is nigh impossible to exist without them so that the corruption and moral negligence caused by such programs is swept under the rug for later generations 'to deal with' (the point being that later generations will be even less capable of reversing such programs as they will likely be even more reliant on them)

see: 'indentured servitude' for similar strategies.

And how having bio-metric ID solves problem of stolen subsidies? Every time a subsidy is stolen, aaddhar card will shoot an arrow into corrupt bureaucrats.

Our poor does not have access to Education and Law so they don't really know where to seek justice.

THere is NO short cut to institutions and habit building.

You could build a million toilets, and people still wouldn't use it in India, because the older institutions and habits are stronger.

In the same way, just having a magical tech bullet is a favorite fantasy of people who haven't seen the cross of human institutions and actual human behavior.

Aadhar is already shown to not work on its promised targets, but has of course been expanded to do everything from book tickets, to get phones.

This I promise, once the ruling coalition changes, the pro-aadhar brigade will change their tune, once they worry that their neck is on the line.

Convenience and efficiency over your rights are terrible choices.

Before the Aadhar, when the Govt. started distributing PIN enabled smartcards to villagers (for food/cash transfers/employment), corrupt officials just started forcing villagers to give up their PIN and give up part of their balance if they wanted to see their food/cash/jobs.

A similar thing is going to happen / probably already happening with Aadhaar where local officials are going to force folks to give up part of their cash/jobs/rations if they want to see any of it, even after these people use their fingerprints/whatever to access whatever they are entitled to.

One of the reasons this biometric ID project was launched was purportedly to get rid of duplicate/fake IDs. (We already have a zillion ID systems - PAN, Driver's licence, Passports, Voter Id, Ration cards, NREGA Id, etc). However by 2013 itself, the govt. said it had detected 34,000 duplicate/fake Aadhaar IDs already. The real number is probably much higher and growing. There are several instances of biometric Aadhaar ID cards successfully registered for dogs as well!

Several Govt. organizations have already leaked (most accessible via a Google search) ~135 million Aadhar numbers along with names, addresses, photos [1]. The incompetent officials simply do not give a fuck about privacy/security.

The problem isn't ID/biometrics but lack of law enforcement which is going to be a problem regardless of Aadhaar. The current leadership vehemently opposed Aadhar due to privacy concerns before the elections, and immediately changed tune.

The danger with hogwash projects such as Aadhar (other than surveilance/loss of privacy/centralizing of power) is that they masquerade as solutions to problem which they never solve in the first place. The poor and hungry will still fucked in the end, but the new surveilance/censorship regime will be here to stay.

If serving the poor is the cause, why is a biometric ID needed (Adhaar is being made compulsory for:) for air travel, rail travel, getting a cellular connection, appearing for high school/university board exams! The Govt. now has a central kill switch to end a dissenting person's life simply by cancelling/blocking their ID! If not by malice then definitely by incompetence at the very least is going to get the lives of scores of people ruined. This project is a disaster and Mozilla is being polite in it's criticism.

[1]http://www.livemint.com/Politics/oj7ky556p6vdljXpRw8gPP/135-...

We all know we could reduce crime by putting cameras in people's homes. But we don't do that, because there are risks to those kinds of invasive measures.

Aadhar is infrastructure that allows for centralized control of the population. Sometimes that control will be used for good things, like stamping out bribery. But that control can just as easily be used for evil too. And history has shown time and time again that's exactly what happens. I live in Canada, a country filled with refugees of authoritarian regimes. Among my friends I personally know lots of people who have fled those kinds of regimes; I know very few people who have fled countries because of bribery. The latter is annoying and unproductive, but the former is deadly.

That's why you're seeing so much opposition to Aadhar: because it's incredibly dangerous.

edit: better wording

I realize you're probably talking about people in India in this context, not people in the U.S., but I helped write part of this anti-Aadhar post back in 2012:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/09/indias-gargantuan-biom...

In support of your view that some critics have minimal knowledge of India, but also in opposition to your view that critics are motivated by considerations of Indian politics, I don't know which party was in power in India either before or after the 2014 election.

The current PM Modi himself criticized it then : https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/453543852175925248?l...

Coincidence?

The riots in 1984 and in 2001 showed us how voter lists can, and will, be misused by people in power to their own benefit.

I find the "no right to criticize" theory confusing.

I understand if your point is that one might be hypocritical in endorsing one government's biometric collection but not another. But I (a non-Indian) have criticized both US-VISIT and Aadhar. I don't want the U.S. government to have a database of visitors' (or citizens') biometric data, nor do I want the Indian government to have a database of citizens' (or visitors') biometric data. There need not be any hypocrisy or logical contradiction in that.

Edit: it looks from elsewhere in the thread like your point is that Indians in the U.S., in particular, must have acquiesced in giving their biometric data to the US-VISIT program (otherwise they would not have been admitted). I think there is some force to that argument, but it also seems to suggest that people who accept any government's preconditions for doing anything that they did not absolutely have to do are then giving up their right to criticize the government for imposing that requirement. For example, some people in the U.S. have criticized local government for requiring a government cosmetology license in order to practice eyebrow threading. I assume that some of those critics have nonetheless signed up for such licenses. Did they completely surrender their right to criticize that requirement when they did so?

Such hyperbole weakens your argument. It's borderline zealous. I don't think you are a zealot and I think you have a valid argument, although I disagree with you. But expressing good thoughts in hyperbole is not effective here.

(Another example is the "no right to criticise" argument. Nobody cares who has a legal right to do disagree. This isn't a court of law. All we care about are good arguments. If someone is hypocritical, point that out. But people can be hypocritical while still having a good point.)

>Finally any Indian in USA simply has no right to criticize Aadhar since the US Visa process requires biometrics from all visitors.

This simply doesn't hold any logic. If Aadhar is so good, then it should be able to stand up to any argument based on its merits regardless of where it's coming from. Can you actually present any points against the points being made by Mozilla?

Are you ok with your intimate personal details being sold to private companies? Maybe your son or daughter have a sickness and now all the private companies can know about it. Maybe years from now the collected data will be used to make decisions about whether to admit them into a school or hire them as professionals.

Please think calmly and logically rather than being sensational, egotistical, and personal. Nobody is trying to hurt your "Indian Pride".

I can understand how Aadhar reduces the corruption of common people (like in the case of tax evasion). And the government loves to reduce corruption of the common man. However it is very unwilling to lower its own corruption.

This is BS because getting a visa is a conscious choice, Aadhar is forced upon India's residents. You're attacking people for having an opinion that's contrary to yours.

About your other points - no one is denying the benefits of having a strong unique ID system that lets people interface with government services; the problem is that Aadhar has no safeguards for privacy - which you would've focused on had you bothered to read the article.

Not the United States!

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card... seems to suggest national IDs are voluntary in 15 countries, nonexistent in 9, and mandatory in 82. One thing that seems possibly significant is that six of the non-mandatory ones include the entirety of the "Anglosphere".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglosphere

That's right, each of the Anglosphere countries has no mandatory national ID. And although the culture and politics of those countries varies quite a bit, including with regard to privacy and civil liberties issues and beliefs about state power, I believe that each one includes a significant number of citizens who are quite proud that there's no mandatory ID, regarding it as a particular way in which their country is more free than others, and as something worth defending.

Please don't break the HN guidelines by going on about downvotes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14431021 and marked it off-topic.

You can't make insinuations of astroturfing or shillage on HN without evidence. Haven't we discussed this with you before? Please don't comment like this again.

Not a complaint, but it looks like the symptoms of what I asked about.

There are more anti-aadhaar green accounts in this thread than pro-aadhaar. If your only argument is to bring thowaway statements like Nationalism/Russia etc into it, then it just reflects poorly on you.

This breaks the HN guideline against name-calling in arguments. Please edit that kind of thing, and bilious bits in general, out of your comments if you want to post here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14431021 and marked it off-topic.

Did you just made up?

All proganda against Aadhar has not been exactly proven.

None of the Aadhar bashing article have been able to exactly point by point prove any of claims made against Aadhar.

> Even worse, the government of India is selling access to this database to private companies to use and combine with other datasets as they wish. This would allow companies to have access to some of your most intimate details and create detailed profiles of you, in ways you can’t necessarily see or control.

Liar, the information they get is your name/dob/gender/adress-if-available because that's all the Aadhaar system stores. Which they would already have since you are signing up to be their customer - mobile company for example.

These are intimate details, or are you delusional? Btw, these are also public details in voter id list which are on the internet, and anyone can look at.

> The government can also share user data “in the interest of national security,” a term that remains dangerously undefined

Which country has been able to define the term "National Security"? And a district magistrate has to approve the request. This is true for all data, just that in Aadhaar law it's codified.

> There are little to no protections on how Aadhaar data is used, and certainly no meaningful user consent.

What data? For subsidies govt already knows who you are. If you don't want to share you name/gender/dob with a private compnay don't use Aadhaar to authenticate.

Why force your choice on me, which loves getting an activated mobile connection in 15 min. Or gets access to Mutual funds and Insurance since complaince cost got reduces from 1k Rs to 10 Rs.

> India can solve its problems by its own when it recognizes that beyond money, there are people who are willing to support its technology movement. Competant tech people have time and again come out against the architecture of the solution - the last to suffer for it was Kiran Jonnalgadda (jackerhack on twitter).

Oh, so it's all about self promotion for your consultancy in the guise of privacy. Hope you get more clicks, Kiran Jonnalgadda!

Good job Mozilla. You prove you are really delusional.