A taxpayer-funded get-it-free demographic database for marketers.

Cloud computing seemed like a stupid idea. Why store data on the web and pay rent when you can store it in a hard disk that you own? How often do you need to access your files from a computer that does not belong to you? Only a traveling salesman runs to such problems! Haven’t we already invented laptops, netbooks and external hard disks? It is like an idea born to fail. Yet, cloud computing has some big names behind it and hundreds of billions of money have already been invested in it. Big companies are moving their data to the mythical benefits and safety offered by the cloud. I’ve been wondering what is the ultimate motive behind all this … until recently…

Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or Aadhaar also seemed like another born-to-fail scheme with powerful backers. We already have crores of fake ration cards that are used to steal stocks from civil supply departments. Similarly, our voter rolls have crores of fake voters to steal democracy from us. In at least one state (Assam), Congress will not be able to win elections if it were not for the fake ration cards ~ Bangaldeshi migrants posing as Indian Muslims. How are they going to eliminate fake IDs from this project? Governments in the US and UK have tried similar schemes and failed.

It seems that films like Back To The Future and The Matrix have convinced Rothschild’s minions that biometric identification is a foolproof way to track humans. (Ever wonder why our Fascists (RSS-BJP-VHP), Communists and even churches of various Christian denominations support it. Orders come from above!)

WHY IS THE CHURCH SUPPORTING AADHAR CARDS WHEN EVEN WINGS OF THE GOVERNMENT THINK IT IS TRASH, OR DANGEROUS

John Dayal

But why is the church canvassing for the UIDAI? In my travels across the length and breadth of this country, I have found Bishops and Parish priests, Pastors and their administrators pumping for the card, without really understanding or being able to explain why they think the cards are important. The only conclusion one reaches is that the Christian leadership has an innate trust in the government of the day, and honestly believes that the government cannot do any wrong…

Actually, the UID card is a costly joke, possibly even dangerous in the long run. The United Kingdom has it for a brief period, and expeditiously gave it up when the populace objected to breach of privacy and security of data issues.

…critics called it ominous. “The fact that, a project of this magnitude was implemented without even the basic formalities needed and an enabling law is a matter of utmost concern. How can a government approve a sum over Rs. 3000 crores for a dubious project, without a benefit analysis study and the approval of the parliament? The only possible reason behind the undue haste in implementing the project is the business interests involved,” a critic said. “The social, economic, political and ethical impacts of the
project are of frightening scale. And well mark the beginning of the end of democracy in India.”

…The US magazine The New Yorker describes how this embarrassment is sought to be averted: a computer operator sits in an office running through enrollment forms to make a cursory judgment whether the image matches the demographic information. “That day,” the journalist reports, “he had already inspected more than 5,000 photographs, and he had clicked “incorrect” 300 times: men listed as women, children as adults, photographs with two heads in them.” It seems there are infinite variations to the theme of error.

In May, “unidentified persons” walked away with two laptops and a pen drive which held data pertaining to 140 persons from an enrollment centre in a school in Hadaspur, Maharashtra. The back-up information was also on the same laptop. The data included “sensitive details” relating to passports, voter ID cards, bank accounts, photographs and
a range of other information. In July, five persons were arrested in Bangalore for issuing fake UID. The UIDAI heard about the racket when they were approached with complaints that “Global ID Solutions” was selling franchises to customers to take up Aadhaar enrollment for a non-refundable fee of Rs. 2.5 lakh an enrolment kit.…

… it is wise not to forget that this is not data
collection in a vacuum. It is set amidst NATGRID (National
Intelligence Grid), the UID and a still-hazy-but-waiting-in-the-wings DNA Bank. Each of these has been given spurs by the Union Home Ministry, with security as the logic for surveillance and tracking by the state and its agencies. The benign promise of targeted welfare services is held out to legitimise this exercise. She says if the Home Ministry were to have its way, NATGRID will enable 11 security and intelligence agencies, including RAW, the IB, the Enforcement Directorate, the National Investigation Agency, the CBI, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and the Narcotics Control Bureau and other secret services, to access consolidated data from 21 categories of databases. These would include railway and air travel, income tax, phone calls, bank account details, credit card transactions, visa and immigration records, property records, and the
driving licences of citizens.

I was reading The Economic Times this weekend when I stumbled on a report that revealed another hidden motive of the Aadhaar project. Manmohan Singh has been saying that the UIDAI project will allow poor people to access government schemes and benefits with minimum hassle. From this report, it looks like that the UIDAI will allow stinking-rich CEOs access poor people with their money-grubbing schemes! Aadhaar will not only bring people under the surveillance of a police state but also tie them inescapably to private monopolies. Until recently, we have been repeatedly told that UIDAI will only be used by the government. Now, they have quietly slipped out the idea that the UIDAI will be used by private parties also. Quite sneaky…

The RIL official quoted in the first instance says the company is also looking to offer online services in “security, health and education”. So, for example, by paying, say, 30 a month, a customer can access doctors online 24X7. He said the company was also talking to the government to link up with the database of unique IDs being created for every Indian, called Aadhaar.

Nandan Nilekani, the chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is implementing Aadhaar, confirmed this. “We have had preliminary discussions (with RIL) on how Aadhaar and the platform can be used to offer applications,” he said. “You may not have a cardiologist for every village, but a 100 of them could be available to millions through this hub-and-spoke model on the cloud (computing).” RIL is targeting these millions. Targeting millions is something RIL never did late in the last century, when its first wave of growth came as a producer of industrial goods – petrochemicals, oil refining and oil exploration.

Now, do you understand cloud computing is for? It is for governments and private companies that want to track citizens and benefit from it.