9 ms·

Life without Aadhaar

94 points by walterbell 2y ago

OutOfHere 2y ago
India is an expert at imposing oppressive laws and policies without thinking through them much.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  What is the alternative for providing direct benefits without lossage? A centralized ID makes it easier to verify identity, given that alternative local systems of identification were easily falsified and used to siphon money away from welfare programs by local politicians of all parties. Before Aadhaar, to get your PAN card you often had to deal with your local panchayat, and that was often a compromised method with local panchayat functionaries requiring bribes or straight up ignoring individuals. Furthermore, because the local level was so compromised, it was easy to create either fake IDs which was often used for siphoning funds. Digital/Identity Libertarianism is a Veblen good when the absolute majority of the population is dependent on government benefits and subsidies.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    There is no alternative afaik. The issues however are: 1. Friction in getting the card in the first place, especially in cases that are out of the ordinary. 2. Extensive and mandatory use of the card for routine non-governmental things that are not benefits or bank accounts. This is more pervasive than one may realize.
    - stackskipton 2y ago
      >2. Extensive and mandatory use of the card for routine non-governmental things that are not benefits or bank accounts. This is more pervasive than one may realize. This is common in almost every country that has central ID system. Businesses want easy way to track someone using Primary Key that doesn't change. It's even bigger benefit to business if it's Primary Key that's same across all businesses. Only way to prevent it is having laws that ban use of the number in business dealings but few countries have those laws.
      - OutOfHere 2y ago
        > This is common in almost every country that has central ID system. Not true. The US has a Social Security Number but it is not needed for everyday business use. It is not needed for getting a cell phone number, for example. In India, the Aadhaa card is needed for getting a cell phone number.
        stackskipton 2y ago
        It's required for getting postpaid cellular plan. It's also required to do banking so credit/debit card you give them, they likely can use that to backtrack.
        reaperducer 2y ago
        It's required for getting postpaid cellular plan. Nope. I got a new cellular device on a national carrier last year without giving up my SSN.
        stackskipton 2y ago
        Plan, not device. If you have a plan, they have your SSN already and ran soft credit check likely when you bought your device.
        reaperducer 2y ago
        It was a new plan, too. This is my first device with this carrier.
        ElevenLathe 2y ago
        Biggest one is probably health insurance. I'd be surprised if you can get any (private, employer-sponsored, ACA exchange, Medicaid, Medicare) health insurance plan without an SSN. Medicare at least makes sense since it is administered by the Social Security Administration.
        kelipso 2y ago
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > What is the alternative for providing direct benefits without lossage? Accept the lossage. No system is foolproof, follow the Pareto principle and that's it. Unfortunately that one is hard to sell to voters, especially as "we're going to eradicate fraud" is a very popular platform of conservative/authoritarian politicians that just use fraud as an excuse to develop repressive systems.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      Pre-Aadhaar, 40-50% of overall welfare system distributions was lost due to corruption at the last mile [0] At the end of the day, India's model of development is based on much more statist Japan, South Korea, and Singapore's, as most advising, developmental grants, and FDI in India is furnished by these 3 countries. While India may speak English, it's administrative system and legal system is closer to Malaysia and Singapore's in jurisprudence and central control, and as such, administrative leadership in India tends to look at Singapore as a model - heck, Narendra Modi was mentored by Lee Kuan Yew when he was CM of Gujarat. Aadhaar itself was developed in coordination with Singapore, and is directly based on Malaysia's MyKad and Singapore's NRIC. Aadhaar has had disastrous pitfalls with rollout, but it is complete at this point - especially with COVID acting as a forcing function. [0] - https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/176312/1/icrier-wp-294.pdf https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/176312/1/icrier-wp-2...
      - jace 2y ago
        And what is the post-Aadhaar loss? Nobody knows, because there's no accounting. We're still in the "don't allow critical examination of Aadhaar" era of this regime. Also, I got my COVID-19 vaccination without Aadhaar. It wasn't asked anywhere. I'm not sure what you're referring to as a connection between them.
- sreejithr 2y ago
  I don't see any "oppression" here. All governments have personal data on its citizens. This is a fact of life. So far, the Aadhar data has been used for the benefit of society (like targeted assistance to people who deserve aid during Covid rather than doing "spray and pray")
  - yapyap 2y ago
    Making life difficult till you eventually do get one is a pressure technique to get everyone to conform to whatever it is you’re trying to impose. Not sure what the right term’d be but it isn’t good nevertheless.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    > the Aadhar data has been used for the benefit of society That's a partial view into it. It's also required for getting basic things that have nothing to do with the government, e.g. a cell phone number, and this is an example of the oppressive problem with it.
  - eldaisfish 2y ago
    are you aware of the sale of Aadhar biometric data on the internet? There have been so many leaks at this point that it is borderline funny. In good faith, how can you look at that and say that Aadhar data has been used for the benefit of citizens? Despite often being "not mandatory", reality will disagree with you.
    - sreejithr 2y ago
      I’d say implementation issues shouldn’t influence our decision on whether an identity credential is fundamentally required or not for the country.
      - mangamadaiyan 2y ago
        Ah, yes. The difference between theory and practice doesn't matter when it is one's pet theory being discussed.
drdaeman 2y ago
> "The stated goal of Aadhaar is noble, of giving every individual an identity, ..." [Semi-offtopic] Just my favorite pet peeve: Identity cannot be given - it's an inherent, innate property of the individual. Or a group. So, as I get it, Aadhaar is not an identity, it's a credential ("ID" is not a great term). Government (or anyone else other than oneself) doesn't give anyone an identity, they merely authenticate your identity and issue or certify a credential. Language is a mess, and that's why I felt important to leave this comment - just to put my two cents against all the confusion that already exist out there. I recently saw a joke that says "auth" is short for "it's either authentication or authorization but I don't remember the difference right now" and it seems so relevant :-) And, yes, I believe the term "identity provider" is a perversion of nature - a blatant attempt at what should be called "identity theft" (instead of what the industry calls "identity theft").
- alephnerd 2y ago
  It is an identity though. That's why it's managed by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The Indian government de facto treats Aadhaar as the primary form of identification within India in the aftermath of the inability of Indian forces in Ladakh being unable to identify Pakistani nationals from Indian nationals during the Kargil War, as well as the broken and disjointed identification process in India that used a mix of voter ID rolls, village/panchayat rolls, and other lossy methods.
  - drdaeman 2y ago
    > It is an identity though. That's why it's managed by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Sorry, I could be wrong, but I cannot agree here. It's an identity document ("ID"), something that documents an identity (so, a credential), not an identity itself. Put simply: identity document ⊂ credential* ≠ identity. I really don't like the term "ID" - specifically because it leads to this kind of confusion (and this leads to all sorts of problems), but it's too well established out there... And I totally get the goal of Aadhaar (or most government-issued identity documents for that matter); my comment was unrelated to India (which is why I marked it as semi-offtopic) but solely regarding the language in the article. *) Note: "credential" is a wider term: all identity documents are a form of credential but not every credential is an identity document. I originally put "=" between ID and credential, but edited it later for clarity.
r9295 2y ago
Needed to get one for my passport. At that point, in 2017, it "wasn't required" but the state bureaucracy made it clear I wasn't getting it without my Aadhar card.
- captn3m0 2y ago
  I got my passport in 2015 without one. Was surprisingly asked no questions about the lack of one.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    The Aadhaar Act, 2016 is what gave the Aadhaar system it's teeth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar_Act,_2016 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar_Act,_2016
- rishabhd 2y ago
  I got mine renewed without Aadhaar. Took 15 extra minutes, but it happened. That too at a tier 2 city (Dehradun).
  - r9295 2y ago
    Renewals, from what I heard, were difficult to hinder since you already had an official state issued document.
suriya-ganesh 2y ago
apropos to this. You can pretty much google up and download millions of Aadhar directly from the web. https://x.com/deedydas/status/1838595739137773570 https://x.com/deedydas/status/1838595739137773570
- ramraj07 2y ago
  I have a six letter Gmail email and get emailed tens of aadhar cards a year.
School-Cotton 2y ago
Just curious: why doesn't this person have an Aadhaar number? Is it because he doesn't want one for ideological reasons, or is there some class of people for whom getting one is difficult or impossible?
- throwup238 2y ago
  It's ideological for him (he's a relatively well known entrepreneur and privacy advocate) but there are classes of people for whom getting an Aadhaar number is difficult for practical reasons: homeless individuals, nomadic and migrant workers, remote tribal communities, refugees, elderly people who were born before reliable record keeping in their region, and transgender people.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    Interesting and makes sense, thanks. I’m not Indian so I had never heard of this before today.
    - sunshowers 2y ago
      Kiran was instrumental in getting a strong net neutrality regime in India, so he's a pretty effective activist too. (I've met him a couple of times.)
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  I don’t think it is appropriate to dismiss concerns around privacy and authoritarianism as “ideology”.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    I didn't dismiss anything. Ideology is not necessarily bad.
ramraj07 2y ago
I’m all for privacy but fail to understand what the authors fundamental beef is with Aadhar. Sounds better as a system to me than what the US has.
- sreejithr 2y ago
  He chooses not to use it on privacy grounds. But, this is a common problem with most national identity databases tbh. Its more likely a political decision than a privacy one.
  - givemeethekeys 2y ago
    In Canada, the government successfully requested banks to freeze accounts of peaceful protestors. Once an increasing share of your transactions with society become connected by an ID number, it is becomes trivial to limit your freedom.
    - ivell 2y ago
      Isn't social security number in many countries widely used, especially where it matters (insurance, banking, pension, etc.?). So we have a better solution? There are some privacy preserving IDs (self sovereign IDs), but I think to get such services, you still need a central ID?
  - jace 2y ago
    Not just for privacy, but broken processes and duplicitous technological claims. It doesn't solve the problems that people assume it does. It does solve other problems, which is why there's so much enthusiasm for enforcing it. But it's hard getting mainstream attention for how these are different sets of problems.
bparsons 2y ago
How is this different than a social insurance number/drivers license number? It is very hard to do business with, or deliver services to someone when you cannot verify their identity.
- captn3m0 2y ago
  SSN is not an Identity Document, and the collection of Biometrics: https://rethinkaadhaar.in/faqs/ssn https://rethinkaadhaar.in/faqs/ssn A DL number can change over time, as your license gets renewed - an Aadhaar is by design meant to remain with you through your lifetime.
- jace 2y ago
  The equivalent of a US SSN in India is PAN, the Permanent Account Number issued as a tax identifier, for both individuals and other tax-paying legal persons. It has been in use for decades prior to Aadhaar.
yapyap 2y ago
yikes :/ that’s gonna be the entire world in the future
- lioeters 2y ago
  The relentless march of government surveillance and surveillance capitalism will ensure that eventually we will have Global Citizen ID. They'll pretend that it's not mandatory while the entire system conspires to make life more and more difficult for those who oppose and resist it, until it becomes impossible to live in society without it. Remind me in 5~10 years.
kkfx 2y ago
Well... Digital identities are a natural step since we need to digitalize the society and so we need to have digital IDs like we need physical ones. The point though it's another, or when imposing them and how. In a country where 99% of homes could be connected and most have already internet access, where a large slice of population use computers every day, so elderly typically have relatives who can help, and those who really need help are few enough there is no problem helping them directly it's a thing. Imposing them (even worse than de jure, but de facto) in a country where a large slice of population have not even a home with an address and ordinary services it's definitively another. India's digital strategy, the 100 smart city program etc are just fascist move to cut off a large slice of population for whom the ruler count to have no option to accommodate in a new society. And it's not much different than various imposition we witness in the west, a small step at a time, more softly.
- BadHumans 2y ago
  No, we don't NEED to digitalize society. We could due with less digital things for the betterment of society.
  - kkfx 2y ago
    To achieve such result you need to digitalize for real. Here in the EU the current state of things is crappy because most do not want digitization and that's so happen driven by few interested parties. So instead of having a smart card per document we have a complicated three-level system handed to the private sector, we have not much coherent digital invoices, an economist have even suggested to create "a virtual State to simplify things", we have certified mails in some countries so badly designed you can't keep then for sure for 10+ year and so on. If people instead of pretend to stop the history train embrace it and impose a certain conduit we could have much better things with much less complicates crappy bureaucratic choices for the sake of few against the other. Try to keep parts of a paper-based world in a bit-based society we already are, it just trying to be Luddites ending as the original ones... A small example: we end up in de facto mandatory smartphones for all simply because only very few have battled to have smart-cards and some are interested in imposing macro-bugs to the whole population. The whole population have tried to ignore the evolution, keeping the paper and they end up with a (cr)app instead of a good smart card.
NovemberWhiskey 2y ago
If you want to make life difficult for yourself another way, you should try interacting with the Indian bureaucracy without a local mobile phone number.
- sunshowers 2y ago
  To be fair that's true in any country.
  - NovemberWhiskey 2y ago
    UK.gov happily sends OTPs to my US mobile number; nor was it my experience in Japan that I had problems.
    - sunshowers 2y ago
      I think it's really patchy at least in the US -- even if the SMS backend supports international numbers the database or UI might just not support them.
cute_boi 2y ago
same in US with SSN everything is difficult.
- jace 2y ago
  The SSN equivalent is PAN, not Aadhaar.
SanjayMehta 2y ago
The problem is that most user facing staff (like car dealers etc) have been trained in exactly one path for form completion and Aadhaar is on that path. So you end up spending a lot of time educating these people, who aren’t really interested in the ideological issues.
cyberjunkie 2y ago
Someone who's not from India might say, biometrics and centralized IDs are great tools to offer benefits to citizens. This is true, but when it is not, when a government is not trust-worthy, because of its own history of doing things this way. They said that all your other IDs will be made invalid if you don't "opt-in" to Aadhaar. They essentially blocked you from using all pre-existing, valid IDs. They now in this ingratiating way ask us, don't you see the convenience?
- jace 2y ago
  There are a very large number of people from whom biometrics cannot be collected, or cannot be reliably collected (meaning they change rapidly): 1. Newborn babies (who are all issued Aadhaar without biometrics) 2. Children (rapid change) 3. Old people (fading eyes, wrinkled skin) 4. Workers handling harsh materials (smoothened fingertips) 5. Disabled people (missing fingers) 6. Visually impaired (iris scans won't work) Biometrics are optional in the design of Aadhaar because all these classes have to be accommodated. But in practice? How do you distinguish between "unable to provide biometrics" and "refusing to provide biometrics with fraudulent intent"? Who makes this determination in each case where biometrics are required? The design of Aadhaar also imagines that the machine is more reliable than the human authority using the machine, so the human does not need be trusted and government can therefore outsource citizen interactions to non-gazetted officials (ie, cheaper for the govt), who no longer have the authority to override the process when biometrics cannot be used. This destruction of government accountability is the problem. This is the other half of the Aadhaar project. It's not just an innocent technological system, it's one that was explicitly conceived and funded as a way for one ideology within government (neoliberalism) to dismantle an older socialist ideology, without any thought for what happens to the technologically-excluded.
kumarvvr 2y ago
Aadhaar has come into existence to facilitate direct benefit transfers to eligible recipients of state and national level welfare schemes. This is necessary because of massive corruption in distribution of wealth in such schemes, where the actual beneficiary gets just 20 bucks or so for very 100 bucks allotted by the govt. It has slowly transformed into an identity in itself, which is wrong. However, with 1.5 billion people, what other alternative is there? Any and all solutions end up looking like a centralized identity system.
- hungryroark 2y ago
  correct. the problem is not that aadhar is being used for DBT by goverment. The problem is coercion when it is not mandatory.
rldjbpin 2y ago
i used to be in the same ideological camp as the op in the beginning. but after seeing how many processes one takes for granted elsewhere got sped up with the new system, you really need to evaluate your overall opinion about this. having lived as an outsider in other countries, many considered as beacons of public freedom, i found a universal id system in almost all of the cases. there were also some cyclical dependency issues that are hard to break without having one by just getting it done for you by your parents or something. this is where i struggle to understand why in those contexts an id like this is completely acceptable but not for indians? i do still agree on the front that this is not a bulletproof system, and misuse/abuse still exists. the local tax id (pan) is no longer accepted as valid id because in the past many got it made through non-legit means. but when non-person entities (from pets to deities) are sometimes assigned one in one-off cases, there can be some skepticism on the original goal for the project. about biometrics, that argument seems weak coming from those who are expats and gave up theirs for their visas. but the one about mandating it to all is something i'd personally thought to stop thinking too much about.
- jace 2y ago
  The article doesn't make an argument around biometrics. Biometrics are needed even for getting a passport or registering a property purchase, but notice how those are never brought up in any argument around Aadhaar's use of biometrics, whether arguing for or against. Procedural speed-ups are not because of the technology of Aadhaar, but because of the regulatory regime favouring it. The same fast processes also work without Aadhaar wherever there's been regulatory pushback against mandatory Aadhaar. For instance, video KYC works just fine without Aadhaar, and CKYC with just PAN also does instant KYC. These are procedural decisions, not technological improvement with Aadhaar. Dig into how it works and you'll find that the technology isn't even where they claim it is.
  - rldjbpin 2y ago
    i mentioned biometrics as historically it used to be a major point against the entire system. it is equally interesting to note that this aspect is no longer discussed as much. we need to yet again stress on the universal part of the system. PAN might have KYC benefits, but keep in mind that there were about 67.7 million tax returns filed this year [1] compared to 1.42 billion or so living in the country. so assuming that everyone can benefit from PAN or other ID systems that are applicable for specific use cases is not enough to reach everyone. whatever mix resulted into what Aadhaar is today, there are affordances that this allows that were previously not possible. keeping in mind that this has been a bipartisan effort, if there was indeed an existing system they could have improved, there should have been enough political and industrial will for it. i just personally come to better appreciate it in hindsight now. [1] - https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1944821 https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1944...
thisislife2 2y ago
Good article about the woes in India to preserve privacy amidst the combined onslaught of government surveillance and surveillance capitalism. My mother's pension account was frozen for many months for not providing her Adhaar Id. I had to finally threaten legal action to ensure she could access her bank account again. We were lucky that we were well-off and my mother could live without her pension for many months, but such actions can make the financially-constrained really desperate.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
adipandas 2y ago
https://uidai.gov.in/en/my-aadhaar/about-your-aadhaar/aadhaar-myth-busters.html https://uidai.gov.in/en/my-aadhaar/about-your-aadhaar/aadhaa... This is what I referred. But never come across a situation where it was followed. Many cases were not progressing without aadhaar.
- pkphilip 2y ago
  The Indian government is extremely duplicitous when it comes to AADHAR. On the one hand they claim it is not mandatory (to comply with the supreme court judgement no this) but on the other hand they make it impossible to get by without AADHAR. Even private institutions use this duplicity to force AADHAR on everyone. Sources: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/the-aadhaar-confusion-four-years-on-some-banks-yet-to-honour-supreme-courts-aadhaar-verdict-8711681.html https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/the-aadhaar-confu...
  - ramshanker 2y ago
    Let's accept this, AADHAR is the most friction-less process to get things done. And Private Institutions aren't going to spend extra to satisfy some errant ideology.
    - marxplank 2y ago
      the errant ideology being “caring about your privacy”?
    - pkphilip 2y ago
      There is nothing "friction-less" about Aadhar. Even with Aadhar you still have to submit a bunch of other documents for getting anything done - even for a bank KYC. Also, different department in the the govt treat AADHAR very differently. The govt circular states that the Aadhar cannot be used as a proof of birth date or citizenship - however, the election commission uses Aadhar as the proof of date of birth! https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/government-makes-citizenship-disclaimer-on-new-aadhaar-cards-more-prominent/article67780076.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/government-makes-citi... Why didn't the govt simply issue a passport for people instead of issuing Aadhar cards? you need basically the same documents to apply for Aadhar as you would for applying for a passport - and the passport can be used for travel, as an ID proof, as a date of birth proof etc. So why have a separate process which duplicates all of this without any of the advantages? Fro non-citizens, an equivalent residence permit with the aadhar number could have been issued. The process for issuing passports already existed. So why recreate a completely new system? Also, even with Aadhar, it has just become yet another entry you must mandatorily "link" to your accounts. you have to manually "link" your PAN to your bank account, your Aadhar to your bank account etc when the govt already knows which is your PAN and your AADHAR.

94 points by walterbell 2y ago

OutOfHere 2y ago

India is an expert at imposing oppressive laws and policies without thinking through them much.

alephnerd 2y ago
What is the alternative for providing direct benefits without lossage? A centralized ID makes it easier to verify identity, given that alternative local systems of identification were easily falsified and used to siphon money away from welfare programs by local politicians of all parties. Before Aadhaar, to get your PAN card you often had to deal with your local panchayat, and that was often a compromised method with local panchayat functionaries requiring bribes or straight up ignoring individuals. Furthermore, because the local level was so compromised, it was easy to create either fake IDs which was often used for siphoning funds. Digital/Identity Libertarianism is a Veblen good when the absolute majority of the population is dependent on government benefits and subsidies.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  There is no alternative afaik. The issues however are: 1. Friction in getting the card in the first place, especially in cases that are out of the ordinary. 2. Extensive and mandatory use of the card for routine non-governmental things that are not benefits or bank accounts. This is more pervasive than one may realize.
  - stackskipton 2y ago
    >2. Extensive and mandatory use of the card for routine non-governmental things that are not benefits or bank accounts. This is more pervasive than one may realize. This is common in almost every country that has central ID system. Businesses want easy way to track someone using Primary Key that doesn't change. It's even bigger benefit to business if it's Primary Key that's same across all businesses. Only way to prevent it is having laws that ban use of the number in business dealings but few countries have those laws.
    - OutOfHere 2y ago
      > This is common in almost every country that has central ID system. Not true. The US has a Social Security Number but it is not needed for everyday business use. It is not needed for getting a cell phone number, for example. In India, the Aadhaa card is needed for getting a cell phone number.
      - stackskipton 2y ago
        It's required for getting postpaid cellular plan. It's also required to do banking so credit/debit card you give them, they likely can use that to backtrack.
        reaperducer 2y ago
        It's required for getting postpaid cellular plan. Nope. I got a new cellular device on a national carrier last year without giving up my SSN.
        stackskipton 2y ago
        Plan, not device. If you have a plan, they have your SSN already and ran soft credit check likely when you bought your device.
        reaperducer 2y ago
        It was a new plan, too. This is my first device with this carrier.
        ElevenLathe 2y ago
        Biggest one is probably health insurance. I'd be surprised if you can get any (private, employer-sponsored, ACA exchange, Medicaid, Medicare) health insurance plan without an SSN. Medicare at least makes sense since it is administered by the Social Security Administration.
      - kelipso 2y ago
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > What is the alternative for providing direct benefits without lossage? Accept the lossage. No system is foolproof, follow the Pareto principle and that's it. Unfortunately that one is hard to sell to voters, especially as "we're going to eradicate fraud" is a very popular platform of conservative/authoritarian politicians that just use fraud as an excuse to develop repressive systems.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Pre-Aadhaar, 40-50% of overall welfare system distributions was lost due to corruption at the last mile [0] At the end of the day, India's model of development is based on much more statist Japan, South Korea, and Singapore's, as most advising, developmental grants, and FDI in India is furnished by these 3 countries. While India may speak English, it's administrative system and legal system is closer to Malaysia and Singapore's in jurisprudence and central control, and as such, administrative leadership in India tends to look at Singapore as a model - heck, Narendra Modi was mentored by Lee Kuan Yew when he was CM of Gujarat. Aadhaar itself was developed in coordination with Singapore, and is directly based on Malaysia's MyKad and Singapore's NRIC. Aadhaar has had disastrous pitfalls with rollout, but it is complete at this point - especially with COVID acting as a forcing function. [0] - https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/176312/1/icrier-wp-294.pdf https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/176312/1/icrier-wp-2...
    - jace 2y ago
      And what is the post-Aadhaar loss? Nobody knows, because there's no accounting. We're still in the "don't allow critical examination of Aadhaar" era of this regime. Also, I got my COVID-19 vaccination without Aadhaar. It wasn't asked anywhere. I'm not sure what you're referring to as a connection between them.
sreejithr 2y ago
I don't see any "oppression" here. All governments have personal data on its citizens. This is a fact of life. So far, the Aadhar data has been used for the benefit of society (like targeted assistance to people who deserve aid during Covid rather than doing "spray and pray")
- yapyap 2y ago
  Making life difficult till you eventually do get one is a pressure technique to get everyone to conform to whatever it is you’re trying to impose. Not sure what the right term’d be but it isn’t good nevertheless.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  > the Aadhar data has been used for the benefit of society That's a partial view into it. It's also required for getting basic things that have nothing to do with the government, e.g. a cell phone number, and this is an example of the oppressive problem with it.
- eldaisfish 2y ago
  are you aware of the sale of Aadhar biometric data on the internet? There have been so many leaks at this point that it is borderline funny. In good faith, how can you look at that and say that Aadhar data has been used for the benefit of citizens? Despite often being "not mandatory", reality will disagree with you.
  - sreejithr 2y ago
    I’d say implementation issues shouldn’t influence our decision on whether an identity credential is fundamentally required or not for the country.
    - mangamadaiyan 2y ago
      Ah, yes. The difference between theory and practice doesn't matter when it is one's pet theory being discussed.

drdaeman 2y ago

> "The stated goal of Aadhaar is noble, of giving every individual an identity, ..." [Semi-offtopic] Just my favorite pet peeve: Identity cannot be given - it's an inherent, innate property of the individual. Or a group. So, as I get it, Aadhaar is not an identity, it's a credential ("ID" is not a great term). Government (or anyone else other than oneself) doesn't give anyone an identity, they merely authenticate your identity and issue or certify a credential. Language is a mess, and that's why I felt important to leave this comment - just to put my two cents against all the confusion that already exist out there. I recently saw a joke that says "auth" is short for "it's either authentication or authorization but I don't remember the difference right now" and it seems so relevant :-) And, yes, I believe the term "identity provider" is a perversion of nature - a blatant attempt at what should be called "identity theft" (instead of what the industry calls "identity theft").

alephnerd 2y ago
It is an identity though. That's why it's managed by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The Indian government de facto treats Aadhaar as the primary form of identification within India in the aftermath of the inability of Indian forces in Ladakh being unable to identify Pakistani nationals from Indian nationals during the Kargil War, as well as the broken and disjointed identification process in India that used a mix of voter ID rolls, village/panchayat rolls, and other lossy methods.
- drdaeman 2y ago
  > It is an identity though. That's why it's managed by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Sorry, I could be wrong, but I cannot agree here. It's an identity document ("ID"), something that documents an identity (so, a credential), not an identity itself. Put simply: identity document ⊂ credential* ≠ identity. I really don't like the term "ID" - specifically because it leads to this kind of confusion (and this leads to all sorts of problems), but it's too well established out there... And I totally get the goal of Aadhaar (or most government-issued identity documents for that matter); my comment was unrelated to India (which is why I marked it as semi-offtopic) but solely regarding the language in the article. *) Note: "credential" is a wider term: all identity documents are a form of credential but not every credential is an identity document. I originally put "=" between ID and credential, but edited it later for clarity.

r9295 2y ago

Needed to get one for my passport. At that point, in 2017, it "wasn't required" but the state bureaucracy made it clear I wasn't getting it without my Aadhar card.

captn3m0 2y ago
I got my passport in 2015 without one. Was surprisingly asked no questions about the lack of one.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  The Aadhaar Act, 2016 is what gave the Aadhaar system it's teeth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar_Act,_2016 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar_Act,_2016
rishabhd 2y ago
I got mine renewed without Aadhaar. Took 15 extra minutes, but it happened. That too at a tier 2 city (Dehradun).
- r9295 2y ago
  Renewals, from what I heard, were difficult to hinder since you already had an official state issued document.

suriya-ganesh 2y ago

apropos to this. You can pretty much google up and download millions of Aadhar directly from the web. https://x.com/deedydas/status/1838595739137773570 https://x.com/deedydas/status/1838595739137773570

ramraj07 2y ago
I have a six letter Gmail email and get emailed tens of aadhar cards a year.

School-Cotton 2y ago

Just curious: why doesn't this person have an Aadhaar number? Is it because he doesn't want one for ideological reasons, or is there some class of people for whom getting one is difficult or impossible?

throwup238 2y ago
It's ideological for him (he's a relatively well known entrepreneur and privacy advocate) but there are classes of people for whom getting an Aadhaar number is difficult for practical reasons: homeless individuals, nomadic and migrant workers, remote tribal communities, refugees, elderly people who were born before reliable record keeping in their region, and transgender people.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  Interesting and makes sense, thanks. I’m not Indian so I had never heard of this before today.
  - sunshowers 2y ago
    Kiran was instrumental in getting a strong net neutrality regime in India, so he's a pretty effective activist too. (I've met him a couple of times.)
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I don’t think it is appropriate to dismiss concerns around privacy and authoritarianism as “ideology”.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  I didn't dismiss anything. Ideology is not necessarily bad.

ramraj07 2y ago

I’m all for privacy but fail to understand what the authors fundamental beef is with Aadhar. Sounds better as a system to me than what the US has.

sreejithr 2y ago
He chooses not to use it on privacy grounds. But, this is a common problem with most national identity databases tbh. Its more likely a political decision than a privacy one.
- givemeethekeys 2y ago
  In Canada, the government successfully requested banks to freeze accounts of peaceful protestors. Once an increasing share of your transactions with society become connected by an ID number, it is becomes trivial to limit your freedom.
  - ivell 2y ago
    Isn't social security number in many countries widely used, especially where it matters (insurance, banking, pension, etc.?). So we have a better solution? There are some privacy preserving IDs (self sovereign IDs), but I think to get such services, you still need a central ID?
- jace 2y ago
  Not just for privacy, but broken processes and duplicitous technological claims. It doesn't solve the problems that people assume it does. It does solve other problems, which is why there's so much enthusiasm for enforcing it. But it's hard getting mainstream attention for how these are different sets of problems.

bparsons 2y ago

How is this different than a social insurance number/drivers license number? It is very hard to do business with, or deliver services to someone when you cannot verify their identity.

captn3m0 2y ago
SSN is not an Identity Document, and the collection of Biometrics: https://rethinkaadhaar.in/faqs/ssn https://rethinkaadhaar.in/faqs/ssn A DL number can change over time, as your license gets renewed - an Aadhaar is by design meant to remain with you through your lifetime.
jace 2y ago
The equivalent of a US SSN in India is PAN, the Permanent Account Number issued as a tax identifier, for both individuals and other tax-paying legal persons. It has been in use for decades prior to Aadhaar.

yapyap 2y ago

yikes :/ that’s gonna be the entire world in the future

lioeters 2y ago
The relentless march of government surveillance and surveillance capitalism will ensure that eventually we will have Global Citizen ID. They'll pretend that it's not mandatory while the entire system conspires to make life more and more difficult for those who oppose and resist it, until it becomes impossible to live in society without it. Remind me in 5~10 years.

kkfx 2y ago

Well... Digital identities are a natural step since we need to digitalize the society and so we need to have digital IDs like we need physical ones. The point though it's another, or when imposing them and how. In a country where 99% of homes could be connected and most have already internet access, where a large slice of population use computers every day, so elderly typically have relatives who can help, and those who really need help are few enough there is no problem helping them directly it's a thing. Imposing them (even worse than de jure, but de facto) in a country where a large slice of population have not even a home with an address and ordinary services it's definitively another. India's digital strategy, the 100 smart city program etc are just fascist move to cut off a large slice of population for whom the ruler count to have no option to accommodate in a new society. And it's not much different than various imposition we witness in the west, a small step at a time, more softly.

BadHumans 2y ago
No, we don't NEED to digitalize society. We could due with less digital things for the betterment of society.
- kkfx 2y ago
  To achieve such result you need to digitalize for real. Here in the EU the current state of things is crappy because most do not want digitization and that's so happen driven by few interested parties. So instead of having a smart card per document we have a complicated three-level system handed to the private sector, we have not much coherent digital invoices, an economist have even suggested to create "a virtual State to simplify things", we have certified mails in some countries so badly designed you can't keep then for sure for 10+ year and so on. If people instead of pretend to stop the history train embrace it and impose a certain conduit we could have much better things with much less complicates crappy bureaucratic choices for the sake of few against the other. Try to keep parts of a paper-based world in a bit-based society we already are, it just trying to be Luddites ending as the original ones... A small example: we end up in de facto mandatory smartphones for all simply because only very few have battled to have smart-cards and some are interested in imposing macro-bugs to the whole population. The whole population have tried to ignore the evolution, keeping the paper and they end up with a (cr)app instead of a good smart card.

NovemberWhiskey 2y ago

If you want to make life difficult for yourself another way, you should try interacting with the Indian bureaucracy without a local mobile phone number.

sunshowers 2y ago
To be fair that's true in any country.
- NovemberWhiskey 2y ago
  UK.gov happily sends OTPs to my US mobile number; nor was it my experience in Japan that I had problems.
  - sunshowers 2y ago
    I think it's really patchy at least in the US -- even if the SMS backend supports international numbers the database or UI might just not support them.

cute_boi 2y ago

same in US with SSN everything is difficult.

jace 2y ago
The SSN equivalent is PAN, not Aadhaar.

SanjayMehta 2y ago

The problem is that most user facing staff (like car dealers etc) have been trained in exactly one path for form completion and Aadhaar is on that path. So you end up spending a lot of time educating these people, who aren’t really interested in the ideological issues.

cyberjunkie 2y ago

Someone who's not from India might say, biometrics and centralized IDs are great tools to offer benefits to citizens. This is true, but when it is not, when a government is not trust-worthy, because of its own history of doing things this way. They said that all your other IDs will be made invalid if you don't "opt-in" to Aadhaar. They essentially blocked you from using all pre-existing, valid IDs. They now in this ingratiating way ask us, don't you see the convenience?

jace 2y ago
There are a very large number of people from whom biometrics cannot be collected, or cannot be reliably collected (meaning they change rapidly): 1. Newborn babies (who are all issued Aadhaar without biometrics) 2. Children (rapid change) 3. Old people (fading eyes, wrinkled skin) 4. Workers handling harsh materials (smoothened fingertips) 5. Disabled people (missing fingers) 6. Visually impaired (iris scans won't work) Biometrics are optional in the design of Aadhaar because all these classes have to be accommodated. But in practice? How do you distinguish between "unable to provide biometrics" and "refusing to provide biometrics with fraudulent intent"? Who makes this determination in each case where biometrics are required? The design of Aadhaar also imagines that the machine is more reliable than the human authority using the machine, so the human does not need be trusted and government can therefore outsource citizen interactions to non-gazetted officials (ie, cheaper for the govt), who no longer have the authority to override the process when biometrics cannot be used. This destruction of government accountability is the problem. This is the other half of the Aadhaar project. It's not just an innocent technological system, it's one that was explicitly conceived and funded as a way for one ideology within government (neoliberalism) to dismantle an older socialist ideology, without any thought for what happens to the technologically-excluded.

kumarvvr 2y ago

Aadhaar has come into existence to facilitate direct benefit transfers to eligible recipients of state and national level welfare schemes. This is necessary because of massive corruption in distribution of wealth in such schemes, where the actual beneficiary gets just 20 bucks or so for very 100 bucks allotted by the govt. It has slowly transformed into an identity in itself, which is wrong. However, with 1.5 billion people, what other alternative is there? Any and all solutions end up looking like a centralized identity system.

hungryroark 2y ago
correct. the problem is not that aadhar is being used for DBT by goverment. The problem is coercion when it is not mandatory.

rldjbpin 2y ago

i used to be in the same ideological camp as the op in the beginning. but after seeing how many processes one takes for granted elsewhere got sped up with the new system, you really need to evaluate your overall opinion about this. having lived as an outsider in other countries, many considered as beacons of public freedom, i found a universal id system in almost all of the cases. there were also some cyclical dependency issues that are hard to break without having one by just getting it done for you by your parents or something. this is where i struggle to understand why in those contexts an id like this is completely acceptable but not for indians? i do still agree on the front that this is not a bulletproof system, and misuse/abuse still exists. the local tax id (pan) is no longer accepted as valid id because in the past many got it made through non-legit means. but when non-person entities (from pets to deities) are sometimes assigned one in one-off cases, there can be some skepticism on the original goal for the project. about biometrics, that argument seems weak coming from those who are expats and gave up theirs for their visas. but the one about mandating it to all is something i'd personally thought to stop thinking too much about.

jace 2y ago
The article doesn't make an argument around biometrics. Biometrics are needed even for getting a passport or registering a property purchase, but notice how those are never brought up in any argument around Aadhaar's use of biometrics, whether arguing for or against. Procedural speed-ups are not because of the technology of Aadhaar, but because of the regulatory regime favouring it. The same fast processes also work without Aadhaar wherever there's been regulatory pushback against mandatory Aadhaar. For instance, video KYC works just fine without Aadhaar, and CKYC with just PAN also does instant KYC. These are procedural decisions, not technological improvement with Aadhaar. Dig into how it works and you'll find that the technology isn't even where they claim it is.
- rldjbpin 2y ago
  i mentioned biometrics as historically it used to be a major point against the entire system. it is equally interesting to note that this aspect is no longer discussed as much. we need to yet again stress on the universal part of the system. PAN might have KYC benefits, but keep in mind that there were about 67.7 million tax returns filed this year [1] compared to 1.42 billion or so living in the country. so assuming that everyone can benefit from PAN or other ID systems that are applicable for specific use cases is not enough to reach everyone. whatever mix resulted into what Aadhaar is today, there are affordances that this allows that were previously not possible. keeping in mind that this has been a bipartisan effort, if there was indeed an existing system they could have improved, there should have been enough political and industrial will for it. i just personally come to better appreciate it in hindsight now. [1] - https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1944821 https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1944...

thisislife2 2y ago

Good article about the woes in India to preserve privacy amidst the combined onslaught of government surveillance and surveillance capitalism. My mother's pension account was frozen for many months for not providing her Adhaar Id. I had to finally threaten legal action to ensure she could access her bank account again. We were lucky that we were well-off and my mother could live without her pension for many months, but such actions can make the financially-constrained really desperate.

deleted 2y ago
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adipandas 2y ago

https://uidai.gov.in/en/my-aadhaar/about-your-aadhaar/aadhaar-myth-busters.html https://uidai.gov.in/en/my-aadhaar/about-your-aadhaar/aadhaa... This is what I referred. But never come across a situation where it was followed. Many cases were not progressing without aadhaar.

pkphilip 2y ago
The Indian government is extremely duplicitous when it comes to AADHAR. On the one hand they claim it is not mandatory (to comply with the supreme court judgement no this) but on the other hand they make it impossible to get by without AADHAR. Even private institutions use this duplicity to force AADHAR on everyone. Sources: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/the-aadhaar-confusion-four-years-on-some-banks-yet-to-honour-supreme-courts-aadhaar-verdict-8711681.html https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/the-aadhaar-confu...
- ramshanker 2y ago
  Let's accept this, AADHAR is the most friction-less process to get things done. And Private Institutions aren't going to spend extra to satisfy some errant ideology.
  - marxplank 2y ago
    the errant ideology being “caring about your privacy”?
  - pkphilip 2y ago
    There is nothing "friction-less" about Aadhar. Even with Aadhar you still have to submit a bunch of other documents for getting anything done - even for a bank KYC. Also, different department in the the govt treat AADHAR very differently. The govt circular states that the Aadhar cannot be used as a proof of birth date or citizenship - however, the election commission uses Aadhar as the proof of date of birth! https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/government-makes-citizenship-disclaimer-on-new-aadhaar-cards-more-prominent/article67780076.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/government-makes-citi... Why didn't the govt simply issue a passport for people instead of issuing Aadhar cards? you need basically the same documents to apply for Aadhar as you would for applying for a passport - and the passport can be used for travel, as an ID proof, as a date of birth proof etc. So why have a separate process which duplicates all of this without any of the advantages? Fro non-citizens, an equivalent residence permit with the aadhar number could have been issued. The process for issuing passports already existed. So why recreate a completely new system? Also, even with Aadhar, it has just become yet another entry you must mandatorily "link" to your accounts. you have to manually "link" your PAN to your bank account, your Aadhar to your bank account etc when the govt already knows which is your PAN and your AADHAR.