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Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

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Re: Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

#211

Post by xeronkek »

aub3bhat wrote: post #33
adityab wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have been fine with Aadhar if - 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.

>> They didn't rely on fingerprints, as they are easy to fake, without a high degree of technical sophistication Aadhar provides multiple levels of security, Number > Fingerprint > Iris >= OTP / Two-Factor. Finally fingerprints are not as easy to fake, even if they are faked depending on deployment a system can randomly ask for higher level of authentication such as iris or OTP. By having these multiple authenticatio…

What if a guy was in a crime scene with my fingerprints all over it? Because he got that data from AADHAR data base and used it to carry out that crime,meanwhile I was on the vicinity having a good time in a restaurant with no CCTV camera?

Who will prove my innocence?

Re: Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

#212

Post by xeronkek »

landryraccoon wrote: post #158
it_learnses wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The illogic in these arguments is astounding. Maybe I can simplify it for you with a few analogies. >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 fro…

Forgive me if I'm mistaken but it does sound like you are writing from a position of extreme privilege. Poor Indians trying to get benefits but having those benefits taken is a life threatening crisis for those impoverished individuals and families. It is entirely forgivable for those families to ignore the "long term consequences" when the short term consequence is losing the meager benefits they have to corruption.…

Don't play the privilage card now every body's privacy is at stake.

Re: Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

#213

Post by it_learnses »

landryraccoon wrote: post #158
it_learnses wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The illogic in these arguments is astounding. Maybe I can simplify it for you with a few analogies. >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 fro…

Forgive me if I'm mistaken but it does sound like you are writing from a position of extreme privilege. Poor Indians trying to get benefits but having those benefits taken is a life threatening crisis for those impoverished individuals and families. It is entirely forgivable for those families to ignore the "long term consequences" when the short term consequence is losing the meager benefits they have to corruption.…

Doesn't matter what position I'm speaking from. Can you argue against my points? Of course, poor and desperate people will take whatever benefits are given them despite how damaging they will be in the long term. Your chemo analogy doesn't hold water here because chemo actually is better in the long term - you don't have to keep doing it once your cancer is cured. This is more akin to acquiring cancer on purpose to cure a cold.

Re: Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

#214

Post by mundanevoice »

xeronkek wrote: post #210
mundanevoice wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do understand that it doesn't only rely on fingerprints, right? There is retinal verification in addition to phone OTP. I had another phone number when I got Aadhar, I changed the city, lost my phone number and now there is no way, I can without physically getting somewhere and submitting the application to update my phone number. API for commercial services isn't a bad thing per se. A lot of time, it would save…

>API for commercial services isn't a bad thing per se. A lot of time, it would save time in documentation. Btw, if you have such a privacy concern, Are you not using Facebook, Whatsapp and all other services for free that sell you data, you behaviour to commercial companies. So you mean to say that its cool to leak my whole family tree data along with AADHAR and PHONE NUMBER to the public? So a novice can know about…

1) There is no real reliable proof of a leak yet. 2) Remember all your fancy iPhones, Macbooks and Pixel etc. having fingerprint sensors. You 100% sure none of these would/could be leaked. Why the hypocritical attack on just one thing?

Out of various things, just one thing: My maid got her account opened for free due to Jan Dhan scheme. The only document required was Aadhar which she had due to a massive drive to enrol people in Aadhar. Now, She got a gas connection without much fuss and all the govt. subsidy gets directly deposited to her bank account. I too give her monthly due via NEFT. All her money goes directly to the deserving place without ever bribing anyone. If it's not making this country a better place for these people, I don't now what is?

Re: Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

#215

Post by intended »

ashwinaj wrote: post #199

I recently made a trip to India; just a week earlier me and a few friends were talking about driver less cars, automation, AI etc.(you know the usual SV talking points) When I landed there all this futuristic talk flew out of my head; it is a very different world out there. I am reminded of this feeling, because this author sits in his/her nice comfy office in Mountain View mouthing off on something with no understan…

Most Indian's, wouldn't care about a constitution, demonstrably don't care about sanitation, and are easily sidelined by superstition.

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.

Re: Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

#216

Post by devnonymous »

dang wrote: post #185
devnonymous wrote: post #29

Edit: I don't care about karma on HN but if you're downvoting please explain yourself. > The Indian ID drive has ensured that benefits make it to the people who need > them without 80% of it being skimmed by corrupt bureaucrats. Citation ? (not about the corruption happening, that has been well established, but about aadhaar allegedly solving this problem). > Having a real identification gives very poor individuals t…

> Edit: I don't care about karma on HN but if you're downvoting please explain yourself. 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.

Not that it matters a whole lot but you made two mistakes:

a. You said going on about downvotes, whereas I mentioned it only once, and you probably didn't bother to check whether the only other reference of the same kind was not made by me.

b. My actual comment and the replies I received (iow, the thread) were not off-topic if you had bothered to read them.

Re: Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

#217

Post by intended »

drieddust wrote: post #11
swaroop wrote: post #2

Aadhaar is one of those programs which is a solution looking for a problem, at huge cost of privacy, security and government surveillance. See https://rethinkaadhaar.in/myths/

Agreed but even most of the very literate ones does not understand the implication. Everyone is so gung-ho about having a single identity tied back to bio-metric data that highlighting the privacy concerns and historical misuse have no effect.

And its not even historical misuse.

Aadhar has been abused in the present, the government has lied about its purpose over its entire existence and has directly abused SC instructions.

The AG for the govt has gone on and said that Indian's don't have a right to privacy in court, and their numbers don't hold up to scrutiny.

This has all happened in the present, none of what I have said is even exaggeration, it's actually happened.

The iSpirit guy was caught, publicly, creating a troll army to abuse Pro Privacy supporters.

Its insane. Do not expect the people fighting for aadhar to ever stop supporting it.

Aadhar is their hero, it ushers in a new age for India - any one who fights against this new age is misguided at best, or an enemy of progress at worst.

Its absurd.

Re: Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

#218

Post by _nedR »

mundanevoice wrote: post #200
_nedR wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I get subsidies from the government, one uniform identity that I can use to get important things. 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.

Benefits Hostage? Are You kidding me? We earlier used to get those benefits as well. But it was all paper based, prone to be caught in the web of middlemen. It's an incentive from govt to get people to register for Aadhar to get better/faster service without us common citizens to get exploited by the middleman. I don't see anything wrong in that.

http://www.firstpost.com/business/no-aadhar-card-you-will-no...

Re: Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

#219

Post by intended »

Its unsurprising that there can be no civil conversation on this topic on HN.

The tech sphere in India is divided into straight up optimizers, for whom things like privacy are an impediment to the progress of the nation. Said progress will make everyone's lives better, so it must progress.

These are the majority of coders that seem to be in the Indian sphere.

In sharp contrast, are the people currently fighting Aadhar in the Supreme court, who believe that privacy is the fundament of a nation in the first place. That without privacy you cannot have a democracy.

And this is just online, what actually happens between the closed doors of power is utterly bereft of what normal American HN crowd would consider civil liberties and human rights.

For those who actually control the system, losses and inaccuracy in aadhar are the same as errors in banking transactions. As long as theres a X sigma error rate, they don't care.

Re: Aadhaar isn’t progress – it’s dystopian and dangerous

#220

Post by _nedR »

abhishivsaxena wrote: post #148
_nedR wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America doesn't have this. EU doesn't have this. AFAIK only UAE has such a comprehensive system. What countries are you talking about that takes mandatory 10-finger + retina scans of its citizens and compiles it into a single database? India hasn't banned DDT which has been banned for decades in every other country. We have crippled infrastructure, severe poverty. Yet India has time and money to implement one of the…

DDT isn't banned in most countries. It's actually recommended by WHO for INDOOR use in Malria control because it's the only viable option. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/ I was hoping to only hear Anti Aadhaar FUD in this thread. Had no idea you had your target set on DDT as well. As for comparision with USA/EU, India is a different country with different set of problem/challenges. Instead…

I was referring to agricultural use which is banned worldwide except India and North Korea.

WHO recommends poor countries to use DDT for malaria probably because people there are dying anyway from malaria. Would rich countries use it? Do you use it in your home? Again why India uses it in Agriculture when other alternatives exist?

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