 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have here with us Dr. Rusha Ramnathan to speak about the Aadhar issue that has been in the news recently. Dr. Rusha, Supreme Court currently is hearing a plea on Aadhar being made mandatory for income tax returns and PAN card. Can you explain a little about it? See, the UID case has been in the court since 2012 and at least six times the Supreme Court has categorically said that UID should not be made mandatory. In August 2015, the court went one step further because the government was not listening at all. The court went one step further and said that not only can you not make it mandatory, you can only use it for PDS and LPG and nothing more. And this was also provoked by the government going to the court and telling the court that people of this country don't have a right to privacy. The question that of course is raised is why does the government need to say that there is no right to privacy for carrying on a project like the UID project? Are they going to deny? What is it that they intend to take away? And in October 2015, the government went again to the court and said that they wanted to expand this to a few more users. So the court at that time, a five-judge bench has given an order saying that you can expand it to four more users, but you can't do it more than that. And even in these six users, it can only be voluntary. It cannot be mandatory. And secondly, they've said all the orders that have been made by the court so far should be followed by the government. And in 2016, March, they passed an order through a money bill, which is also in challenge before the court. They passed a law saying and through a hurried kind of introduction, late introduction of multiple clauses in the finance bill, they have now said that they've gone one step further because they've said that you can't pay your income taxes unless you have your UID number. And you have to attach your UID number to the PAN card. And if you don't do it, they will cancel your PAN card. So now the poor have been told that if your biometrics doesn't work, then you don't get your food and many people are not getting their food. Now the others are being told that if you don't give this information and don't reveal yourself to the government, they are going to cancel the PAN card. The reason that they give is that they want to get rid of duplicates. Now when you look at the number of duplicates as they themselves have said in parliament, in 2007, there was an answer. In 2016, there was an answer. It's something like 0.4% or 0.04%. It's like 11 lakhs out of 250 million. So there is no way that there is a reasonable connection between the object that they say that they want to achieve and the kind of moves that they are making. The whole approach seems to be that the state owns everything that we have and they can take what they want whenever they want it. This is an extraordinary assertion of power. So the Supreme Court, at least from the press account, the Supreme Court seems to have said that Aadhar cannot be mandatory for welfare policies but whereas it can be made mandatory for bank accounts and PANs, how accurate is that? It's a misunderstanding of what happens in a courtroom and what happened on that day. So on the 27th of March, the case was to have been listed where petitioners were going to the court to ask that section 7 of the other act has to be should be stayed. What is section 7 of the other act? It says that you can make it a condition, that's the provision under which you can make it a condition for getting any services or any entitlements that you have, you know, benefits, services and subsidies. To get that, you can make it a condition that a person should have a UID number which they will then have or you have to go in and roll for the number. They wanted that to be suspended. Now when the court was looking at this is done at what is called the mentioning time. Now on the 27th of March, although it was listed, it got taken off the list and they were told that it will be on the 3rd of April. So the lawyer went to the court merely to tell the court that listen, please make sure that it comes up on the 3rd because it's an urgent kind of thing that we need to have it heard. During that time, the court said so what is this, what is this last order? And they were looking at the October 15th order. You must remember that they had not looked at from September 23rd through the six orders. They only saw the last order. The last order was taking off from the August 11th order. August 11th order is the order that gave the final kind of directions in that. Here all they did was to say that the Attorney General is guaranteeing that it will be voluntary. So how does it matter if we just add four more services to it? So they added in August, on August 11th, the court had been, I don't think the court was very happy with the government going to them and saying that the people of this country don't have a fundamental right to privacy. So it's during that time that the court said, okay, so we will have it heard by a larger bench. But in the meantime, you cannot use this. You can't compel people to enrol. And because the Attorney General said, oh, the poor don't have an identity, poor don't have an identity, they said, okay, so where do you want to use it? He said PDS, they said, okay, he said LPG, they said, okay. And then he said NREJ, they said, that's it. Because there are many other challenges that are there to do this project, including matters of surveillance, including matters of national security, including matters of convergence, of profiling, multiple challenges that there are. So they said, you can't use it anywhere else because you can't render infrastructures serious issues that have been brought before the court. That was the August 11th order. Then on August 15th, all that the court did was to expand the two categories into six categories. That's all. So what did it mean that you can use the UID? The government can use it in six situations and nowhere else. So in those six situations, they were saying that even there, you have to make sure it is not mandatory but voluntary till the court has finally heard and decided the matter. This was there. Now when the court, these are two judges who are not part of the earlier bench, they've not seen all the papers. So the judge is looking at that case and he's saying, oh so it says that it should be voluntary for all of this. So that means it can be mandatory for the others. It's like an observation that is made by a judge who is just looking at a last order and not at the whole case. Now if the judge is intended that this should become an order, then you stated as an order, right? There's two things to remember. One is there is no order. It was an oral observation which then the council for the petitioner had gone ahead and explained that this is not what it was. Second thing to remember is that this was two judges sitting as a bench. That 15th October order was passed by five judges and among the things that they had said was that all the orders from September 23rd should be respected and should be followed by the government. So recently we have been hearing of a lot of data breaches that a lot of public databases have been, the lot of databases with the government have come out into the public. Can you explain a little about it? See this UID, there are two parts to this project. At least two parts. There are multiple parts. There are two main parts. One is that it is about the biometrics. The other part is about what is called seeding. Seeding means putting this number in every database. Both of them are problematic. Biometrics is a problem. First of all, it is untested technology. Secondly, it is forcing us to like the lawyer has been arguing in the court now. It is saying that the state has sovereignty over our bodies and whenever they say come and give your fingerprint, give your iris, you just have to give it. You do not have a choice. So this assertion of sovereignty is one huge problem in the context of biometrics. And the other thing is that since it is untested technology, as we have been seeing, large numbers of people are not able to access what is their entitlement because biometrics is being used on them. Right? So this is the poor. On the other side, you have this whole thing of seeding. Now seeding is partly, you know, it is about state, state surveillance, creating mechanisms for convergence of data. Corporates have a huge interest in this because if they are able to converge data and to be able to pick up what they want from wherever, the trading on data will continue. So this seeding is a very important part of what they want should happen. But it is dangerous for a people to have seeding done. Interestingly, when the other act was passed in 2016, it allowed for only two kinds of uses. One use was where they said that it is for authentication, which means that I go, I have give my number, I give my biometric, the central CIDR will say whether it matches or not. So is it me? Is it not? That's it. That's one set of uses. The other use that they say which has actually expanded what they said in the beginning because initially they said no data will be given by the UID database. They brought in EKYC and made it possible for that data to be given. Now what is this data? When you go, you give your number, you give your biometric, it is sent to them. You're supposed to give your consent to the information being sent by that is whatever is on their database to be sent to the user agency. So that's how GEO for instance has been collecting its where the consent is, I don't know because most people don't know what they are consenting to. But anyway, that data can come in. These are the only two uses. Neither of these talks about or permits the seeding of the number in that database. You go there, you give your number and your biometric, like the biometric cannot be retained. You cannot retain the number either. What has in fact been done by the state and what is rampantly in practice is in fact, you know, all these are places where they are saying put your number, put your number, put your number. Putting your number in multiple databases is what creates potential for surveillance. It is very clear breach of privacy. There are no norms at all on how all this can be traded. And what in effect is, what in fact is happening, you know, there is an interesting clause in the other act. It's 2K, section 2K, which says that the demographic information that is collected about people shall not include information about race, caste, religion, income, medical records, these will not be collected by the UIDAI. Why do they say that? Because the moment you have all that information attached to a number, it profiles the person. So, they are saying we are not profiling. We are just identifying. And then you put that number in every database and the profiles get created. Now you have the Human Resources Development Ministry, which is collecting data from teachers saying, you know, I must say that what they are creating, the Indians who are supposed to feel a little better about ourselves at some stage and this government had promised us that feeling are now being told that we are a nation of fakes, duplicates and ghosts. So, they said that, you know, there are lots of fake teachers and they want to create a national portal of teachers. So, they are asking everyone to give their UID number along with their caste, their religion, their phone number, all this kind of information is now being collected and it is being attached to the UID number is being attached to it. Now you put all this data in different silos and then you upload these silos. So, many of these people, it is not the HRD database, but you will find that there are multiple other databases that have been made public. And as you would know and I do not need to explain this here, that when you have in the digital world, in the digital age, once you put it up even for five minutes, multiple people have downloaded this information. So, the security of that information has got deeply compromised. So, apart from the security of the databases itself, how good is the biometric technology because we have been hearing that the workers of MNREGA are unable to access their wages because their fingerprints are unable to be authenticated. You know, it is a different stages that we have to worry about. There are many people who are not able to get on to the system, on to the UID, although they are going to enrol because it is not like they are dying to enrol. But since they do not have a choice that are people going to enrol, many people who are unable to get on to the system because they are biometric, it is not accepting their biometrics for whatever reason. Then once you have got on and you put your number into the system, when you go to access like you are saying wages, your biometrics have to work every time. And if it does not work, they say go and re-enrol. Now, re-enrolling is not just in, you know, when you have fingerprints that do not work. So, you actually had Mr. Nillikani given explanation when saying that, oh, that is not a problem. Okay, when he was asked about Andhra where they said it is 36 percent rejection rate, he explained that, you know, it is not 36 percent rejection. If a person, it means 36 percent of the times that people have come to authenticate, which means what that same person may have come three times, because you go once, it does not work. So, you go a second time, it does not work, you go a third time. So, each of those is calculated as one. So, there is, so he says it is not as if 36 percent of the people are losing out. So, then he says, anyway, if that happens to fingerprints, there is iris. And if iris does not work, there is OTP. So, a person must have a mobile phone which has the same number, which is on the UID database. And if that does not work, you have the local Munsif. Now, if this is that system, this is not me saying it, this is Mr. Nillikani offering this, saying that, oh, it is all not a problem at all. Everybody can get whatever, because this is how we work on it. Thank you, Dr. Usha. Thank you for coming.