Usha Ramanathan works on the jurisprudence of law, poverty and rights. She writes and speaks on issues that include the nature of law, the Bhopal Gas Disaster, mass displacement, eminent domain, civil liberties including the death penalty, beggary, criminal law, custodial institutions, the environment, and the judicial process. She has been tracking and engaging with the UID project and has written and debated extensively on the subject. In July-September 2013, she wrote a 19-part series on the UID project that was published in The Statesman, a national daily.

Her work draws heavily upon non-governmental experience in its encounters with the state; a 6 year stint with a law journal (Supreme Court Cases) as reporter from the Supreme Court; and engagement with matters of law and public policy.

She was a member of: the Expert Group on Privacy set up by the Planning Commission of India which gave in its report in October 2012; a committee (2013-14) set up in the Department of Biotechnology to review the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012; and the Committee set up by the Prime Minister's Office (2013-14) to study the socio-economic status of tribal communities which gave its report to the government in 2014.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

80 - Press Conference – State Violates SC orders on UID


Press Conference – State Violates SC orders on UID


*PRESS INVITE*

*Press Conference – State Violates SC orders on UID*

*WHEN: Friday, *18th September 2015, 12.30 pm

*WHERE: *Indian Women’s Press Corps (IWPC), 5 Windsor Place, Ashoka Road

*Speakers: *Aruna Roy, Usha Ramanathan, Reetika Khera, Anjali Bhardwaj, and persons adversely affected by the UID project

Five times the Supreme Court has issued orders in relation to the UID project, and each time the government and the UIDAI have chosen to brazen it out by ignoring the orders. The most recent was the order of August 11, 2015, when the court said that the UID number may not be used in anything other than in PDS and LPG distribution, even where it shall not be made
compulsory; and that the information may not be used for no other purpose.

The government and the UIDAI continues to flout this order with impunity. The aggressive enrollment and seeding in every data base is in violation of the orders of the court. In the meantime, people face multiple barriers because of their troubles with the UID.

Recently we witnessed the spectacle of the Attorney General arguing in the Supreme Court that the people of India do not have a fundamental right to privacy and that the case be referred to a Constitution Bench. There is little doubt that this was a tactic adopted so that the project can proceed unhindered by the case before the court.

There are, among many others, issues of personal liberty, privacy, national security, exclusion, data as property, the inversion of the relationship between the state and the citizen, the deliberate flouting of court orders, the conversion of voluntary enrolment into mandatory enrolment on threat of
being left out, untested biometrics, no informed consent about the uses to which the data will be subjected, the insecurity of rampant outsourcing, and the absence of an exit option to get out of the UIDAI data base.

Most recently, the UIDAI has set up a Unique Biometrics Centre of Competence about which the UIDAI says: "Nature and diversity of India's working population adds another challenge to achieving uniqueness through biometrics features. Like other technology fields such as telecommunication, we do not have experience like developed countries to leverage for designing UIDAI's biometric systems. For example, the largest existing biometrics database in the world is one order smaller in magnitude than India's needs. Therefore, it is necessary to create a UIDAI Biometrics Centre of Competence (UBCC) that focuses on the unique challenges of UIDAI."

This is evidence of something that critics of the project have been saying all along: that the UID project is essentially an experiment on a whole population.

To discuss this and allied issues we invite you to join us on Friday the 18th of September at 12.30 pm at the Indian Women's Press Corps.

For more background information visit & read the attached documents:

1. Decoding the Aadhaar judgment: No more seeding, not till the privacy issue is settled by the court
http://indianexpress.com/article/blogs/decoding-the-aadhar-judgment-no-more-seeding-not-till-the-privacy-issue-is-settled-by-the-court/

2. Protect the Right to Privacy as a Fundamental Right!
http://www.rediff.com/news/column/protect-the-right-to-privacy-as-a-fundamental-right/20150807.htm

3. The Statesman Series:
http://www.thestatesman.com/news/3686-a-virtual-monster-in-the-cloud.html

4. MoneyLife Series: www.moneylife.in/author/gopal-krishna.html

5. UID: from inclusion to exclusion
http://india-seminar.com/2015/672/672_reetika_khera.htm

6. Article in BENGALI TIMES OF INDIA (ei samay)
http://www.epaper.eisamay.com/Details.aspx?id=16879&boxid=13583456

7. The Big Picture - Confusion over NPR and Aadhaar
Rajya Sabha TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpe37lkGDkQ

8. Aadhaar is Dangerous
<http://goog_1273736701>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9wZLpPkxm0

9. Repository of aadhaar related articles: aadhararticles.blogspot.com
compiled by Ram Krishnaswamy

10. NATGRID, UIDAI & NPR Emerging As India’s NSA
http://www.countercurrents.org/krishna271213.htm

thanks & regards

Gopal Krishna
Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL)
Mb: 08227816731, 09818089660
E-mail: 1715krishna@gmail.com
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