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‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

nytimes.com

151–160 of 172 posts

Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

#151

I disagree with the assessment. It seems like any form in which the government tries to identify you is being compared to the scary Orwellian dystopia. There is no cost benefit analysis. Sure it could be misused, however it can also be used in a super beneficial way. India is a country where some Indians have never obatained birth certificates, there was no equivalent SSN system, often resources are poorly distribute…

There is a cost benefit analysis, and many people have shown that the govt figures are incorrect, and that Aadhar has not had an impact.

I am fully sincere about it.

Straight up Aadhar has hurt our constitution. IT was initially run without ANY legal protections or aegis.

Later it was retroactively Okayed via a money bill.

It has rarely been used for its intended purpose, but instead it has terminal feature creep and support from the state to enter every sphere of life.

The state govts are now making their own mirrored data bases of Aadhar data, which last I checked is not covered by the Aadhar law.

The aadhar agency is the only agency which can take cognizance of Aadhar offenses - making the agency its own judge and jury.

Aadhar was never meant for scam protection or prevention - take a look at the claims of the Aadhar agency.

They use clever tactics to appear to be enablers, but when put on the spot they reduce their job to "we just authenticate biometric requests" - moving the onus and responsibility for any leaks or misuse to other agencies.

Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

#152

Why Aadhaar[1] is evil: #1 Aadhaar has been foisted on us under false pretenses. #2 It is useless. #3 It is destroying the lives of the poor. #4 It is coercive. #5 It is technically unreliable. #6 It is insecure. #7 It puts sensitive data into unreliable hands. #8 It is creating the infrastructure for 24×7 surveillance. #9 It is allowing privileged insiders to profit from personal data. #10 It frees the government fr…

I do not know about other points and there may be rings of truth to all the issues but #2 and #3 are definitely false.

No number 3 is true. In many places people are being denied access to their rights because of authentication failures.

Its come up in the SC case and in the news.

Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

#153

> "If you are not able to prove your identity, you are disenfranchised," he said. "You have no existence." This is so fucking disingenuous, and really demonstrates the heart of the problem. If you create a bunch of systems that rely on totalitarian cataloging of humans for their basics of every day life, then when some individuals aren't tracked it sure looks like those individuals' problem. But really the problem is…

Except: - you "seem" to not know/care how many illegal immigrants are there in India. - you "seem" not to know/care about dead people receiving benefits. - you "seem" not to know/care about people being born, widowed, died all on paper with no real person ever having existed. - you "seem" not to know/care about multiple PAN cards (for tax) being issued to a single person. - you "seem" not to know/care about people re…

[deleted]

Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

#154
post #131

Most 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…

This reads like propaganda.

Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

#155
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is like saying that the right way to fix bugs is by conducting meetings to grill the programmer. Sure, it can work but it does not scale. If clerks spend all day manually answering RTI queries who will do the work?

Where in the world do clerks spend all day answering FOI/RTI queries? I feel people greatly overestimate the typical volume of requests, having personally known at least three FOI officers in two jurisdictions. When you're seeing elevated request volume, it's likely that there's something substantial worth requesting, which is exactly the point of this form of legislation.

> When you're seeing elevated request volume, it's likely that there's something substantial worth requesting

Or you're seeing persons trying to frustrate the system with senseless requests. This happens with businesses all the time when they provide courtesy services (sprint's tty service for example was a regular tool for prank calls, USPS and their free boxes resulted in people being flooded with box orders)

I'm 100% for transparency, but it's not a magic bullet. There is a real and non trivial cost for such transparency and it's the price we have to pay for diligence. often, societies seem unwilling to pay and instead demand that an organization do everything they used to and more with no additional resources, and transparency, especially for organizatikns without the resources to have digitized things,means a lot of human input and work.

Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

#156

Why Aadhaar[1] is evil: #1 Aadhaar has been foisted on us under false pretenses. #2 It is useless. #3 It is destroying the lives of the poor. #4 It is coercive. #5 It is technically unreliable. #6 It is insecure. #7 It puts sensitive data into unreliable hands. #8 It is creating the infrastructure for 24×7 surveillance. #9 It is allowing privileged insiders to profit from personal data. #10 It frees the government fr…

I do not know about other points and there may be rings of truth to all the issues but #2 and #3 are definitely false.

Not really. There are actual deaths on the ground with desperately hungry people being denied benefits due to the bio-metric authentication systems flaking out. So much so that the CEO of the agency managing this system himself has an authentication failure rate of around 19%. Thankfully he doesn't need the ration to survive.

Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

#157

Earlier 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…

Enforcing law and order should take away corruption from the country, not a high risk scheme like this. I'm not really comfortable with linking anything because this govt literally gets away with murder. These things only enable them to pin point us easily when we resist. I voted for them despite my friends' advice. Seriously regret it now. There are numerous countries in the world who have a very low rate of corrupt…

>"There are numerous countries in the world who have a very low rate of corruption without forcing the citizens to enroll in a scheme like this."

Just curious, can you name them and provide sources.

Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

#158
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then why don't they go and apply to be documented? I'm sure their foreign birth certificate is enough to prove their existence. Oh, that's right, it's illegal and would get declined. Hence the correct term: "illegal immigrants". The topic is complicated and touchy enough without it being muddled with incorrect terminology.

I didn't want to fall into this debate, hence used the politically correct term. My point being, the other guy is arguing that USA doesn't require identity documents, which is laughable. You need SSN just to earn money in USA.

Sorry - I didn't mean to single out your specific usage of the term. Just a bit of a touchy topic as well because I find such language-manipulation that appears trivial on the surface to be a tool used to control discussion. And as a legal migrant, I find the right to be in a host country a privilege; one that should be earned rather than demanded.

Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current PM wants to use Adhar to turn India into 1984 Ocenia. No wonder he is shoving adhar down everyone's throats Imagine your ISP is connected to adhar As is your gmail/HN Within a sec they'll identifywho is beind my username and then they'll make my life hell, like electricity cut in my apartment, my society suddenly gets a large bill etc They will be lose incidences, for there are far more bhakts at any plac…

You should read more about what UIDAI is. Don't be another whatsapp forward fear-mongering uncle.

Is that what they teach trolls at the IT cell? Because that's the same thing bhakts and idiots have said me and never do they have a valid rebuttal for my points.

So let me be clear, my friend, unless you can prove that my points are wrong, you are the one who believes the "Powerful if true, Ram Bhagwan really travelled to Himalayas, forward it to 100people amd let Mudiji win"

And since you brought up the point of Whatsapp forwards, pray copy paste the forwards you get your information out of

Re: ‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

#160
post #2

As 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…

> people with influence are not exempt.

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/aadhaar-card-mandatory...

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