-The Hindu The Aadhaar Bill has been passed with no public consultation about the privacy safeguards necessary for such a database and no provision for public or independent oversight. The rights to liberty and freedom of expression cannot survive if the right to privacy is compromised. The Central government has forced the Aadhaar Bill through Parliament in a week. Aadhaar has had an invasive and controversial presence well before the government’s attempt...

-Outlook The structural basis is being laid out for future authoritarianism at the behest of foreign biometric and Surveillance technology What distinguishes Barack Obama and David Cameron from Narendra Modi? Obama and Cameron oppose biometric identification but Modi supports it. On 11 May 2005 in the US, the Real ID Act for a national ID was rushed through US Congress and the US Senate with utmost urgency, a legacy of George Bush...

-The Indian Express There is reason to wonder if this law is intended to be taken seriously, except in getting everyone on the data base, making it a scheme to number the population, and giving extraordinary powers to the UIDAI. The disrespect for the law has been an abiding aspect of the UID project, never mind the government (facts have mattered as little, but that is for another time). In the beginning...

-The Hindu Rajya Sabha returns Aadhaar Bill to Lok Sabha with Opposition amendments . Even as the Opposition aired its concerns over the possibility of mass Surveillance, Parliament passed the controversial Aadhaar Bill, 2016, after acrimonious debates in both Houses. In a day marked by high drama, hours after the Opposition succeeded in pushing through five amendments to the Bill in the Rajya Sabha, they were rejected in the Lok Sabha. The amendments...

-The Hindu The Aadhaar Bill opens the door to mass Surveillance. This danger needs to be seen in the light of recent attacks on the right to dissent. No other country, and certainly no democratic country, has ever held its own citizens hostage to such a powerful infrastructure of Surveillance. The Aadhaar project was sold to the public based on the claim that enrolment was “voluntary”. This basically meant that there was...