Govt should confiscate Nilekani properties to retrieve $1 Billion.
https://www.quora.com/Which-caste-is-looting-in-India-since-...
‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances
141–150 of 172 posts
Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances
#142As a tech professional, it's extra disturbing the way the government pushes these harebrained schemes by marketing them as 'Digital India', 'India Stack', etc. thus getting visiting dignitaries from other countries to lap it up. We really need to be careful that we don't whitewash autocratic bureaucracy by branding it digital innovation. Note the spin from Aadhaar proponents in this NYT article--that it's the equival…
I'm from India too. While I don't support the Aadhaar program in it's present form, just so that we understand the arguments from the other side: India has a lot of problems but most of them stem from two causes: 1. Corruption 2. Inequality In positions of power, corruption is universal. I have yet to meet a person in Bangalore who has been able to purchase property without paying a bribe. Too many of our government…
I agree that this will solve a lot of problems, despite my reservations about the system.
A few years ago, I spent three months interviewing and photographing many of the nomadic and scheduled tribes of Gujarat, which made for a good example of disenfranchised people in India generally: lack of voter id or ration cards, which made it hard or impossible to receive assistance, work, medical care, and attention in general from the authorities.
Huge efforts by organizations such as VSSM and Janpath to help tribal people obtain their correct papers literally changed their lives. It gave them political influence as a large group of voters; it gave them access to applying for land to make permanent settlements.
One group of people that were very upset with these efforts must be apoplectic with rage over Aadhaar: greedy and corrupt representatives in panchayats. No longer would they be the sole conduit for money, food, work and representation.
My €0.02
Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aadhaar number enables identity fraud. Since paper-aadhaar is still very much accepted as a proof, just having the number is enough (in many cases) to take over someone's identity and get a new SIM issued, which you can then use for emptying the bank account. There are also phishing scams happening with Aadhaar since it uses OTP as the authentication factor. We have OTPs as 2FA for bank transactions, and it works bec…
Where do you get some with verification? What do you mean by unencrypted SMS. How do you sms is unencrypted?
See https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/11493/how-hard-...
Add to this that the legal encryption limit for GSM is India is just 40 bits and you can easily wardrive SMSs
Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances
#144Most people commenting here don't get the situation in India. We elected a radical leader with a dictatorial behavior and this is why: 1. The old govt was descended from a long line of political dynasty known for inaction and corruption. 2. Election fraud! Mine and my family members names were already voted for by members of the incumbent party when we reached the voting booth in 2014. And the election officer sippin…
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Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances
#145As a tech professional, it's extra disturbing the way the government pushes these harebrained schemes by marketing them as 'Digital India', 'India Stack', etc. thus getting visiting dignitaries from other countries to lap it up. We really need to be careful that we don't whitewash autocratic bureaucracy by branding it digital innovation. Note the spin from Aadhaar proponents in this NYT article--that it's the equival…
I'm from India too. While I don't support the Aadhaar program in it's present form, just so that we understand the arguments from the other side: India has a lot of problems but most of them stem from two causes: 1. Corruption 2. Inequality In positions of power, corruption is universal. I have yet to meet a person in Bangalore who has been able to purchase property without paying a bribe. Too many of our government…
Aadhar does not solve any of those issues.
You forget - corruption or cheating is an evolving system. There is no set of static rules which govern the world. Cheaters as a result always adapt and find an edge.
Finally - The massively hurtful demonitzation exercise failed to uncover large amounts of hidden cash.
While everyone who worked with money knew this, the lay people still believe in magic bullets and tech optimism to solve what are inherently human issues.
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Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does Aadhaar stop corruption? You think the corrupt are just going to check in with their fingerprints and "Oh man you caught me?" This seems like a system that will just hit those with lesser means. I'm not sure I see that as equality or something that would stop corruption.
A computer cant be bribed. Move transactions online, cut out the middleman and corruption goes down. To do this, you need a strong national identity scheme. Aashaar is a good start but would need to be augmented with derived authentication mechanisms (preferably pki) to reduce reliance on the biometrics
Security failure always moves to the weakest link.
The issue with bribery is always a differential of power = rent seeking behavior.
This makes aadhar the enabler of corruption, not the remover of it, since now the State is so deeply intertwined in your life that it is inextricable.
Aadhar will long term make things more corrupt. The current levels of corruption will look childish - it returns us to pre 1980 levels of corruption
Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm from India too. While I don't support the Aadhaar program in it's present form, just so that we understand the arguments from the other side: India has a lot of problems but most of them stem from two causes: 1. Corruption 2. Inequality In positions of power, corruption is universal. I have yet to meet a person in Bangalore who has been able to purchase property without paying a bribe. Too many of our government…
I agree that this will solve a lot of problems, despite my reservations about the system. A few years ago, I spent three months interviewing and photographing many of the nomadic and scheduled tribes of Gujarat, which made for a good example of disenfranchised people in India generally: lack of voter id or ration cards, which made it hard or impossible to receive assistance, work, medical care, and attention in gener…
Wait a little.
Indians are very very good at thinking out of the box, and specialize in working against rules. Its our national past time to be honest.
In many cases, people will let you take the money and then will just pressure you for it. Aadhar does not solve that.
Cheaters (which is what corruption is) basically adapt to rules. Your assumption is that things will remain the same.
They will not.
Aadhar achieves nothing, because the core issue we have is enforcement of the law at both the center and the periphery.
This means autonomy of the police force, expansion of the judiciary.
You will not find one party advocating for this. Instead the parties know that Indians love the idea and concept of magic bullets, and they sell that as the product.
Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances
#148Lets step back and pose a meta question - how does a state go about providing services to its citizen if the state cannot identify citizens as its own and as unique entities. Both being necessary conditions. A well functioning state needs to be a strong (sorry libertarians) and benign (cf. Somalia and North Korea) to take care of its citizens. You can take birth, live and die in a weak state without the State ever kn…
Theres an error in your question, and to illustrate it, Ill extend the answer to an extreme length.
Well the BEST way would be to put every human being in a cell, and then have a location for it.
That way food, water, shelter, healthcare can all be given immediately.
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The state should provide humans the ability to live their life. Aadhar however gives the state too much power, and for little actual value.
The only real way to work a state is to make those local units work.
This is the ACTUAL hard work of a nation state - but most of our best and brightest want to leave the country and go abroad.
This means anyone ethical and hardworking leaves. You can imagine what that gap implies.
Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
First of all, Aadhaar is not just being used for welfare schemes. It is a giant database getting linked to everything. I wouldn't be surprised if it will soon be mandatory for booking flights. Plus much of the database has leaked. You can find thousands of Aadhar cards online just by googling. As far as preventing 'leakage'--the best approach would be to not subsidize products but to move to direct benefits transfer…
Plus much of the database has leaked. Honest question: how much does this matter? For instance, I believe in Denmark your ID number is simply not a secret at all, no more than your name. While in the US, your SSN & address basically seems to let any crook empty your bank account.
I like my privacy and freedom.
I dont know how people are ok with Aadhar. Recently the aadhar data of widows in Delhi was leaked. You can find their address and various details.
I've been to the local than to register a cyber crime. Their words: "You are lucky you lost only a few tens of thousands of RS. People are losing lakhs and the Cyber cell cant help them."
Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances
#150This article gives a good overview of the promises and issues of the Aadhar system. I might be wrong but it doesn't add anything new which hasn't been covered in other Aadhar related articles submitted earlier. The system has done some good. Mostly in the public schemes area where it was originally intended to stop corruption. But, there are some serious issues with the system. First is the internet infrastructure. A…
Hey if you have an article showing that Aadhar has done good, please share.
Most of the Aadhar numbers are disputed and many cases they made straight up fraudulent or ambiguous claims.