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Showing posts with label Biometric profiling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biometric profiling. Show all posts

Thursday, 4 February 2016

10:09

Digital Life Certificate -Jeevan Pramaan- A Hit With Pensioners


Digital Life Certificate -Jeevan Pramaan- A Hit With Pensioners 

Press Information Bureau 
Government of India
Ministry of Communications & Information Technology
02-February-2016 15:00 IST

Jeevan Pramaan- A Hit With Pensioners 

Jeevan Pramaan (https://jeevanpramaan.gov.in/) provides a big relief to all pensioners. A pensioner can now digitally provide Annual Life Certificate to the authorities for continuity of pension instead of presenting himself physically or through a Life Certificate issued by specified authorities every year. Lakhs of pensioners on various schemes are already benefiting from it. 

Launched by the Prime Minister on 10th Nov 2014, nearly 12.5 Lakhs pensioners have registered for Digital Life Certificate (DLC) in about a year. Interestingly the enrolled pensioners come from different districts of the country showing the interest the facility has generated all over the country including in far flung rural and hilly districts. Started with Civil pensioners of Central Government only, several other pensioner schemes have adopted Jeevan Pramaan and provide this facility of Digital Life Certificate to these pensioners. Presently apart from civil Central Government employees, Defence services, Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO), Post Offices, Railways, Defence Pensioners Disbursement Office (DPDOs), several PSUs including Mumbai Port Trust, Chennai Port Trust and New Delhi Municipal Council are providing this service. 

State Governments have also recognized the potential of Jeevan Pramaan and adopted the service. State Governments of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Pondicherry, Odisha, Andaman & Nicobar, Rajasthan and Jharkhand have already started providing these services. 

Jeevan Pramaan service is provided by NIC through a Central Portal developed on Open source. The platform is highly scalable. Developed using in-house manpower, the portal has been developed and maintained free of cost to all the user agencies and is also free for pensioners. 

In Jeevan Pramaan a pensioner can digitally show that he or she is alive using his/her biometrics. Biometric devices are available in CSC’s, Bank branches, Pensioner associations, Govt. offices etc. More over any citizen can also purchase a finger print scanner and do the identification from home. A typical finger print scanner currently costs around Rs. 2600/- only and the prices are expected to come down in future. The usefulness of Jeevan Pramaan will increase even further as the biometric authentication device gets integrated with mobile phones. 

All pension disbursing organizations, which have a requirement of periodic life certificate to continue disbursing pension are welcome to join this free offering. 

For more details they are required contact Ms Nandita Chaudhri, DDG, NIC (Email: )
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Monday, 3 August 2015

07:42

Forced to have Biometric Aadhaar? File an affidavit in Supreme Court before by 3rd August to get relief

Forced to have Biometric Aadhaar? File an affidavit in Supreme Court before by 3rd August to get relief

Forced to have Biometric Aadhaar? File an affidavit in Supreme Court before by 3rd August to get relief

Court wants specific instances of violations of its order

Biometric profiling promotes genetically determined caste system

1st August, 2015: As per Supreme Court’s website the case against biometric aadhaar number is “Likely to be Listed on: 04/08/2015”. Earlier, on 30th July, 2015, the Court said that after hearing the whole matter if it found reasons they would give whatever order was necessary. The judges were concerned about denial of any service to any Indian resident because they did not have an aadhaar and asked for specific instances of violations of is orders. It wanted affidavit stating the same to enable it to pass orders in this regard.

Gopal Subramanian, Senior Advocate for the petitioner seeking scrapping of 12 digit biometric aadhaar number project concluded his arguments raising the issue of governments and their institutions violating Supreme Court’s orders. He underlined the issue of inter connectivity of various databases and seeding of aadhaar into all the databases. The counsel sought enforcement of court’s orders and sought immediate protection of all the children from biometric profiling. From Government’s side Additional Solicitor General of India, Pinky Anand apparently misinformed the Supreme Court that there is no interconnectivity between biometric aadhaar and other programs and databases of the government contrary to documentary evidence which were shown to the court. 

Apparently, applauding herself, she was heard telling the Senior Advocate that he did not get any desired interim relief not realizing that the court made it explicitly apparent that their reiteration of the previous orders even in the face of violations hasn’t been sufficient

Towards the end of the hearing on 30th July, Shyam Diwan, Senior Advocate representing Justice K S Puttaswamy (Retd) appeared and supported Subramanian’s contention against seeding of aadhaar with other databases such as electoral database. He asked the court time to argue the matter on Tuesday, 4th August, 2015.    

There is documentary evidence to suggest that a situation is emerging where if the pre-existing databases like electoral database, census and other databases which are under preparation are converged at the behest of unaccountable and undemocratic financial institutions and biometric surveillance technology companies. The court is yet to take cognizance of it although future heads of states, prime ministers, legislators, law enforcers, military and security personnel are being made transparent to transnational powers without factoring in its far reaching security implications for decades and centuries to come. 

The collection of biometric data, personal sensitive information which is deemed “asset” is illegal and mandatory requirement for aadhaar in manifest contempt Supreme Court’s repeated orders during 23rd September, 2013 till 16th March, 2015. When confronted with such gross wrongful acts, adopting the posture of “offense is the best defence”, in a stark case of misrepresentation of relevant precedents, Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi orally submitted in the biometric aadhaar case in the Supreme Court that right to privacy is not a fundamental right. 

During the hearing Subramanian contended that right to privacy is an inalienable birth right and natural right during the pre-lunch hearing. In fact he argued, birth itself is a gift of privacy.

The fact remains aadhaar based on indiscriminate biometric profiling is an assault on right to privacy.  
Notably, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had set up a Biometrics Standards Committee which revealed that 'the biometrics will be captured for authentication by government departments and commercial organisations at the time of service delivery.' The commercial organisation mentioned herein is not defined. Notably, Biometrics Standards Committee had categorically stated that UID/aadhaar’s is meant only for “civilian application” but the order on aadhaar enabled biometric attendance system has been extended to defence employees as well. The fact remains UID was first adopted by USA’s Department of Defence, later by NATO. It has subsequently been pushed through World Bank’s eTransform Initiative in partnership with France, South Korea, Gemalto, IBM, L1, Microsoft, Intel and Pfizer. Some of them have signed agreements with UIDAI. This constitutes not only a threat to privacy but also to national security.  

Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL) which has been opposing biometric enrollment, profiling, databasing and surveillance through aadhaar like schemes since 2010 appeals to fellow citizens to send information about specific instances wherein they were denied services in the absence of aadhaar or they were compelled to enroll for aadhaar. This is urgently required by to be filed in the court as an affidavit. If such facts can be shared, lawyers representing the petitioners can prepare it as an affidavit. CFCL had appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance that trashed the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010 that wished legalise UIDAI and aadhaar through an ex post facto law in order to escape adverse judicial action. Notably, the Bill did not define biometric data which as per Information Technology Act includes DNA data. Government’s Centre for DNA Fingerprinting & Diagnostics (CDFD) is seeking caste data as well paving the path of genetic determinism. Such projects have been abandoned in UK, Australia, China, France, USA, Philippines and other countries. CFCL attended the hearing in the Supreme Court on 29th and 30th July, 2015 and has been following the case since 2012 when the case against aadhaar was first filed.  

CFCL seeks attention of fellow citizens who want to say that they enrolled for 12 digit biometric aadhaar number because of a threat of discontinuance of a service, they too should share their formal statements in this regard. It could be quite useful. They could also make statements asking that their number be deleted from the aadhaar database called Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) because they never wanted to be there in the first place. Such statements will illustrate how the aadhaar database was and is being constructed through coercion and not through consent or voluntarily. It will underline the absence of free informed consent. The cases of specific instances can be communicated to Email-1715krishna@gmail.com

(Aadhaar authentication is the process wherein aadhaar number, along with other attributes (demographic and/or biometrics and/or One Time PIN [OTP]) is submitted to UIDAI’s CIDR) for verification. Biometrics is a method by which a person's authentication information is generated by digitizing measurements of a physiological or behavioral characteristic. Biometric authentication verifies user's claimed identity by comparing an encoded value with a stored value of the concerned biometric characteristic.) Scientific studies have established that this technology is inherently fallible. The uniqueness and permanence of measurable biological material which is the very basis of aadhaar is a admittedly only a postulate.     

Given the fact that hearing is underway since 21st July, all eyes are on the three judge bench to set matters right by ensuring that its orders are complied with before addressing issues of constitutionality. In a situation no one has been held accountable for violating court’s previous orders on mandatororiness of aadhaar wherein almost every government entity has deliberately chosen not to comply with it, how can court be convinced that its verdict on the constitutionality of biometric data collection and aadhaar will be complied with?  


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