Aadhaar: The Promise and Reality of the Surveillance State

aadhaar-logo-one-unchangeable-password-everywhere-even-if-leaked-no-ok-reset-your-fingerprints

Tighten the chokehold and kill dissent. When anonymity goes away, public debate is more silent. Too much democracy (sounds wierd, I know) and freedom is a bad thing for those in power.

What will be marketed:

  • Less tax evasion
  • Catch terrorists
  • Less leakage of subsidy
  • Easy transactions (finger lagaya, ho gaya!! OMG!!)

What really will happen:

  • constant monitoring
  • censorship
  • suppression of dissent. (It is trivial for me to map out who all attended a protest demo and where they live if you carried your mobile with you or are videographed. Realtime facial recognition works even with hoodies and balaclavas. Even easier for me to blackmail you. Doubly easy for me to plant your aadhar in places you haven’t authorized. How will you know? You wont know why and who used it anyway, you get fucked for it.)
  • credit ratings by private firms using your data (the politico-industrial complex, the rich man’s state, check out what China is doing with reputation score for citizens.)
  • targeted media articles and shaping of public opinion via media and places like FB (look up cambridge analytica and the trump campaign. Look at how easily Russia took over the USA.)
  • Mining of data based on your browsing patterns (JIO does this already. Data is the new oil. It is easy to model populations right down to the galli level based on this data: Above point/URL.)
  • fear based compliance
  • attacks like 1984 riots become easier
  • the state can make you disappear
  • random and warrantless data fishing expeditions by government agencies or by those with incidental access
  • stalking by government (this happens even in the US with so many controls in place. God only knows what will happen here)
  • With aadhar based basic data and punitive measures (exclusion from the state/deletion of identity) in place, forced compliance with things like genetic testing to determine vague things like “indian-ness” becomes a possibility (Check out the kuwaiti example)

What wont happen:

  • Fine grained control on our own data including the ability to deny and/or revoke permissions to third parties
  • Liability of the UIDAI for breaches
  • Aadhar enabled transparency in elections
  • Aadhar enabled Transparency in bureaucracy and decision making by politicians
  • Aadhar enabled transparency of political party funding
  • Accountability for power grabs or unilateral decision making schemes based off of aadhar. We have essentially written off our rights to the UIDAI on how our data will be used in the future.

Why is this happening? Our population is now at a very dangerous stage with lots of young people and no jobs or other avenues. It helps to have control or situations and revolt can happen way too easily. Our ruling classes dont have a clue of how to solve basic issues apart from lining their own pockets, protecting their kids & investments and divide&rule. Emotive issues are used as a cover every week on TV to subvert actual debate while serious legislations are being made. Our population is largely uneducated and easily swayed by glitz and silly TV shows (the reason why TV now is crap and has large numbers of religious shows and kulcha based shows). Educated urban youth dont connect well with actual desi TV programming anymore.

  • Does Aadhar require this level of biometric info? No.
  • Should we let go of the control we have of our identities? No.
  • Should third parties have access? No.

Essentially, your access to freedom will now need to be mediated by Aadhar and what it says. Anyone with power can fuck your happiness and freedom.

Republished with permission by budbuk on Reddit

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2 thoughts on “Aadhaar: The Promise and Reality of the Surveillance State”

  1. Few years back my name was forwarded for Aadhaar enlistment by my Mother, who like old British India / Independent India dwellers, believed in being ‘first in line’ for all Govt. schemes and in following its diktats. Always hating being lured into things for supposedly ‘my own benefit’, I decided to quickly ‘get over with it’ while rushing out for some essential errands. I thought that it’s just a matter of filling out some forms. I was taken aback when suddenly a device was shoved onto my eyes and while my fingers were press forced on another. Something felt suddenly amiss. I went through the motions in a disgruntled hurry and quickly walked out to return to my chores, with a fresh nagging load on the mind that I’ve done some thing wrong or rather ‘evil’ to myself. It took me just the next few days to philosophize, analyze and deduce that I had surrendered my ‘Privacy’ and would be subjected to a host of ‘state controlled consequences’, which are also now explained by Vidyut in her’s this article:

  2. Totally agreed. The future seems to be bleak. Is there a way out? Only if there is a farsighted statesman who can implement citizen friendly policies to secure the data.

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