Corporate verdict against Indian Judiciary!
The corporate giant overrules Supreme Court Order!Despite the Supreme Court's recent strictures on Aadhaar, Nilekani has ensured that the scheme is now too big and too widely used to be scuttled.
Palash Biswas
Obviously a corporate verdict against Indian Judiciary!After the Supreme Court order the corporate government of India did nothing to ensure the constitutional or legal validity of the NATO plan of Surveillance! Millions already spent on the unconstitutional illegal corporate plan for monopolistic aggression against Indian People.
But India Incs aligned with corporate media have waged an all out war to sustain the best tool of economic ethnic cleansing.
Thus, Nandan Nilekani, dares to pass a verdict against Indian judiciary.
If lalu Prasad, an elected representative, an ex CM,ex MIC Railway may got behind the ba,convicted in Fodder Scam scheme, what about the UID corporate scam involving millions without a valid mandate?
Where are the masters of sting operations?
Just come out from the dugout!
How the UID spent govt money bypassing parliament and constitution?
Why the privacy of Indian citizens has been brutally violated to accomplish a zionist NATO war plan?
Why basic services remain suspended just because of an unconstitutional illegal number?
On what ground the citizenship is rejected violating civic,human rights and international laws?
Why DRONE is deployed in peace zone in the heart of India?
Biometric[edit]
Fingerprints being scanned as part of the US-VISIT program
Main article: Biometrics
Biometric surveillance is any technology that measures and analyzes human physical and/or behavioral characteristics for authentication, identification, or screening purposes.[49]Examples of physical characteristics include fingerprints, DNA, and facial patterns. Examples of mostly behavioral characteristics include gait (a person's manner of walking) or voice.
Facial recognition is the use of the unique configuration of a person's facial features to accurately identify them, usually from surveillance video. Both the Department of Homeland Security and DARPA are heavily funding research into facial recognition systems.[50] TheInformation Processing Technology Office, ran a program known as Human Identification at a Distance which developed technologies that are capable of identifying a person at up to 500 ft by their facial features.
Another form of behavioral biometrics, based on affective computing, involves computers recognizing a person's emotional state based on an analysis of their facial expressions, how fast they are talking, the tone and pitch of their voice, their posture, and other behavioral traits. This might be used for instance to see if a person is acting "suspicious" (looking around furtively, "tense" or "angry" facial expressions, waving arms, etc.).[51]
A more recent development is DNA fingerprinting, which looks at some of the major markers in the body's DNA to produce a match. The FBI is spending $1 billion to build a new biometric database, which will store DNA, facial recognition data, iris/retina (eye) data, fingerprints, palm prints, and other biometric data of people living in the United States. The computers running the database are contained in an underground facility about the size of two American football fields.[52][53][54]
The Los Angeles Police Department is installing automated facial recognition and license plate recognition devices in its squad cars, and providing handheld face scanners, which officers will use to identify people while on patrol.[55][56][57]
Facial thermographs are in development, which allow machines to identify certain emotions in people such as fear or stress, by measuring the temperature generated by blood flow to different parts of their face.[58] Law enforcement officers believe that this has potential for them to identify when a suspect is nervous, which might indicate that they are hiding something, lying, or worried about something.[58]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance
The corporate giant overrules Supreme Court Order!Despite the Supreme Court's recent strictures on Aadhaar, Nilekani has ensured that the scheme is now too big and too widely used to be scuttled.
September 23, 2013,mind you,the Supreme Court which is examining the validity of the Aadhar scheme has passed an interim order saying no citizen should suffer for want of Aadhaar cards and Aadhaar cards should not be issued to illegal migrants.
The Delhi government has maintained that the registration for Aadhar or the unique identification number (UID) is voluntary. But by linking the Aadhaar to the ration card has virtually made enrolling for the UID mandatory.
Now the government's ambitious unique identity project comes with a word of caution from the Supreme Court. While hearing a petition on its distribution among illegal immigrants, the top court said getting an Aadhaar card must be voluntary and not mandatory.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has joined government and PSU oil firms against the Supreme Court order making Aadhaar card not mandatory for availing social benefits saying, its directive has "very serious implications" in implementation of welfare schemes.
The UIDAI also contended that its order dated September 23, putting the onus on it to check that Aadhaar card should not be given to undocumented migrants, impinges on the jurisdiction of the appropriate authorities that are entrusted with the task of verifying citizenship.
In an application before the Supreme Court, the UIDAI submitted that Aadhaar is stated to be a proof of identity and there are other agencies to perform the task of verifying citizenship and detecting illegal immigrants.
"UIDAI has been mandated to provide Aadhaar to resident of India as a matter of conscious policy decision of government. Aadhaar is upfront stated to be a proof of identity not citizenship. It may be mentioned the government has specific agencies to perform the task of verifying citizenship and detecting illegal immigrants," it said.
"The interim order of the court in directing UIDAI to check the citizenship status of a person applying for Aadhaar and identifying illegal immigrants impinges on the jurisdiction of the appropriate authorities under law that are entrusted with this task," it said while pleading with the court to modify the interim order against, which Centre and oil PSUs have already approached the apex court.
In its order on September 23, a Bench of Justices B.S. Chauhan and S.A. Bobde said: "In the meanwhile, no person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card in spite of the fact that some authority had issued a circular making it mandatory and when any person applies to get the Aadhaar Card voluntarily, it may be checked whether that person is entitled for it under the law and it should not be given to any illegal immigrant."
The Supreme Court on Friday posted for hearing on October 8 an application filed by the Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, (MOPNG), seeking modification of the interim order that restrained the government from making Aadhaar card mandatory for transfer of social welfare benefits to beneficiaries.The Hindu reported.
Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran made a 'mention' before a Bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi for urgent listing of the application. The court directed it to be listed for hearing on October 8 before the appropriate Bench.
The application said: "The above order has the effect of staying the Direct Benefit Transfer for Liquefied Petroleum Gas Consumers [DBTL] scheme, which has been launched by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on June 1 and is currently in operation in 54 districts as it mandatorily requires the beneficiary to possess a Unique Identification for receiving subsidy."
The Centre clarified that retail consumers would not require the Aadhaar card to purchase LPG cylinders from the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) at market prices. Only those who were seeking subsidy on supply of market price cylinders (up to nine cylinders per annum) were required to mandatorily obtain an Aadhaar card and produce the same to avail of the subsidy.
It said:
"The DBTL scheme has been launched to ensure that the LPG consumers' entitlement is not diverted and to prevent leakage in the LPG subsidy, which amounted to Rs. 3,95,58,00,00,000 in 2012-13 . Given the gap in the market price and the subsidised price of LPG, there is a strong incentive to direct the cylinders for commercial purposes in a manner that is not permissible otherwise, defeating the purpose of the policy and causing loss to the exchequer.
"The DBTL scheme, by use of Aadhaar number, which provides a unique identification of every individual, has put into place a robust mechanism to ensure that bogus/duplicate connections are detected and sale happens at market prices while genuine consumers can avail of subsidy in their bank accounts. This will prevent unscrupulous elements from diverting the public resources for illegal purposes and consequently reduce the subsidy burden. So far, over one crore [1,00,00,000] subsidy transfer transactions have been done to over 4.5 million LPG consumers amounting to Rs. 471.39 crore.
"Keeping in mind the objectives for which the DBTL scheme has been launched and implemented and the absolute necessity of the Aadhaar card to ensure its successful implementation the Court should modify its order to state that while no one might be denied domestic LPG cylinders at market rates in the absence of Aadhaar cards, the card might be allowed to be mandatorily sought by the MOPNG to make subsidy payments to those entitled to the same under the DBTL scheme in order to eliminate the diversion of subsidised cylinders into black market."
The BJP on Tuesday said the Aadhaar card of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) does not have Parliament's approval and rejected by one of the key committees of the House.
"The Authority of India Bill, 2010, which gives sanction to this particular card was rejected by the standing committee on Finance," said BJP vice-president Smriti Irani. The programme violated the Constitutional right to privacy, she alleged.
The inclusion of all residents in the Unique Identification number (UID) scheme would threaten the nation's security by giving illegal migrants rights of citizens, she said.
Interestingly, the scheme received praise from surprise quarters with the BJD's Jay Panda describing it as the "only thing that the UPA government is doing right".
Mr. Panda admitted to being a great supporter of the scheme and 'championing' it nationally as well as internationally.
UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani asserted that the authority would cross the target of generating 60 crore Aadhaar numbers before the deadline of 2014 in the next few months. Mr. Nilekani said 46 crore numbers had been issued so far.
"The key issue lies in meeting the expectations of an increasingly aspirational generation and to understand that aspiration is a non-linear commodity. It cannot be one way or the other; it has to be an integration of bazaar, samaj and sarkar to take India to the next level. Technology will play a key role in this, be it reaching healthcare to the villages or making PDS supplies available to people," Mr. Nilekani said after delivering a keynote address on "India's journey to 2018" at an event organised by the Eisenhower Foundation.
Responding to criticism of the scheme, he highlighted its importance of reaching entitlements to the people. The government believed in inclusion and a large number of Indians did not have a valid identification.
"We believe in inclusion. Fundamentally, we need to shift to higher gear... We have huge demand from all across society for Aadhaar numbers. We have to make sure that the delivery model is more equitable and efficient," he said.
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Oct 14, 2013, 12.12 PM IST
How Nandan Nilekani took Aadhaar past the tipping point In another six months Nandan Nilekani would have quit while he was ahead, after having enrolled 600 million Indians into the world's largest and most audacious government ID project, the UIDAI Aadhaar.
Rohin Dharmakumar, Seema Singh, NS Ramnath/ Forbes India Despite the Supreme Court's recent strictures on Aadhaar, Nilekani has ensured that the scheme is now too big and too widely used to be scuttled. Nandan Nilekani has pulled it off. Well, almost. In another six months he would have quit while he was ahead, after having enrolled 600 million Indians (and possibly some non-Indians) into the world's largest and most audacious government ID project, the Unique Identification Authority of India's (UIDAI) Aadhaar. "Look at how many challenges we've contributed to help resolve: identity, financial inclusion, less-cash economy [cash transactions form the bedrock, globally, for fraud and corruption], direct benefit transfer and subsidy reform," he told Forbes India one Friday evening in September in a relaxed mood at his residence in Bangalore's Koramangala suburb. He looked weary yet content. A few days after we met, credible news reports said Nilekani—IITian, ex-CEO of Infosys, best-selling author, world-flattener and chairman of the UIDAI—could soon add another title to his glittering CV: He was likely going to contest the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Bangalore as a Congress candidate. (When we asked a follow-up question later, he wouldn't comment on it.) But then on September 23, the Supreme Court had to go and spoil it all with an interim ruling saying that Aadhaar was voluntary and its use could not be mandated by any government agency in order to provide services to citizens. (As we go to press, news reports say that the government will seek a review of the order.) The ruling is not surprising: Aadhaar was always voluntary. But, over the last year, more and more states and government agencies were making its use mandatory for a host of services, from buying cooking gas to registering marriages and renting houses. Naturally, this spurred more people to get in line for their Aadhaar numbers and allowed Nilekani enough momentum to put Aadhaar conclusively beyond the reach of its detractors. "Aadhaar is now too big to fail and too big to ignore," says Uttam Nayak, Visa's group country manager for India and South Asia. "Five-hundred million Indians voted for him, and he won hands-down!" Nilekani himself is confident: "We believe [Aadhaar] is irreversible now." Unfortunately, the Supreme Court doesn't seem to have got the memo. Battle Lines Aadhaar never lacked enemies. The main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, felt Aadhaar numbers ought to have been given only to Indian citizens, not all residents which, in its view, would include millions of illegal immigrants (a view the Supreme Court now seems to endorse). The Left parties believed it was a ploy to deny subsidies to sections of society. Civil society and privacy activists were worried it would be used to indiscriminately gather information about people, which in the wrong hands could be used for harassment or mischief. The bureaucracy fought it too, presumably because it threatened the opacity it thrived in. Even the Congress had serious divisions over the project's broad scope: Many saw it as a threat to existing power equations; most powerful of all, the Home Ministry's National Population Register (NPR) fought to protect its turf. Rarely has a major government initiative slammed into such a wall of opposition, cutting across political and ideological divides. Frankly, it's miraculous that the UID survived at all. That it did, and the array of strategies Nilekani used to outwit and outrun his many foes, makes for a riveting study. Stratagems and Weaponry Nilekani was very quick off the blocks. He was appointed UIDAI chair in July 2009. The first Aadhaar number was issued in September 2010, and then the pace accelerated: 100 million by November 2011 and 200 million by February 2012. This caught many within the political and bureaucratic establishments flatfooted. "We felt speed was strategic. Doing and scaling things quickly was critical. If you move very quickly it doesn't give opposition the time to consolidate," says Nilekani. Then the war with the NPR came up. Union Home Minister P Chidambaram (now finance minister) felt the UID's enrolment process wasn't as foolproof as the NPR, a mandatory register under his ministry, which enrolled citizens using a strict house-to-house canvassing method involving community verification. (The UID enrolled any resident who walked into a centre.) Tension between Nilekani and Chidambaram had been brewing for nearly a year, but came to a boil when UIDAI sought approval to enrol all of the remaining population (till then it had only got incremental approvals to enrol up to 100 million people at a time). Chidambaram, it is learnt, put his foot down. Around the same time, in December 2011, a 31-member Parliamentary Committee headed by the BJP's Yashwant Sinha categorically rejected the National Identification Authority of India Bill, the proposed law under which UIDAI and Aadhaar were to function; it even suggested that the data already collected be transferred to the NPR. Faced with what looked like co-ordinated opponents, Nilekani had to compromise. In January 2012, a formula was forced upon both him and Chidambaram: UIDAI would directly enrol another 400 million people (in addition to the 200 million it already had) across 16 states while the NPR would handle the remaining 600 million in the other states. To avoid duplication, the UID and NPR would exchange data, ensuring that each one's members would get enrolled in the other's programme at the back end. By then, Nilekani had realised that convincing everyone was an impossible task. He had spent enough time within Delhi's corridors of power to realise that there was only so much he could achieve by staying neutral and apolitical.
Jyoti Mukul: Should Aadhaar be made mandatory?
A Supreme Court interim order says it should not, but the issues involved may not be quite so clear cut
The concept of Aadhaar (the Hindi word for basis or foundation) has evolved since it was introduced in 2009. The number, according to the website of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAIthat administers the programme, is "a voluntary service that every resident can avail [of] irrespective of present documentation". Yet, it has become mandatory for several things - for instance, for those who access government doles in the form of scholarships, pensions and cooking gas subsidy. In some states, it has become mandatory for registering marriages and property. The upshot is that there is considerable confusion among the people about whether they should or should not have an Aadhaar number.
Aadhaar's benefit for an individual lies in the fact that it gives an identity without seeking residence proof, unlike other identity systems. It is a portable number that can be used anywhere. All that is needed is an introducer who confirms the identity and address of the he/she is introducing.
The non-necessity of residence proof, however, has become one of the grounds on which Puttaswamy has challenged the government's programme, the argument being that such an identity proof is also being given to residents who are not citizens.
This argument can be countered by the fact that even some fundamental rights such as the Right to Equality under Article 14 under the Constitution is available to non-citizens within the territory of India. Nevertheless, the point whether Aadhaar should be given to citizens alone can be debated and argued either way. The apex court, on its part, has ruled that the authority issuing an Aadhaar number has to check whether the person concerned is entitled to it and that "it should not be given to any illegal immigrant".
Of course, the issue has acquired a political tinge since Aadhaar's biggest driver is the much-feted direct benefits transfer programme (DBT) which was also why the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government decided to spend Rs 2,342 crore on it (till March 31, 2013) and has allotted another Rs 2,620 crore for 2013-14. Though the DBT essentially involves a change of delivery mode, not a fresh subsidy, the UPA government has projected it as a pro-poor programme by launching it at rallies.
Even without the politicisation, it is true that the Aadhaar-linked DBT has made disbursal more efficient and targeted at intended beneficiaries, plugging the kind of leaks that are inevitable in central programmes that incur expenditures of over Rs 231,000 crore on subsidies and Rs 23,000 crore on social welfare schemes.
The most important point from the Supreme Court interim judgement, however, is that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory and people cannot be made to "suffer" due to the lack of legislative sanction. This restricts the government's ability to switch to this new mode of cash transfer in a bigger way, which is probably why the UIDAI has joined the government and public sector oil marketing companies in moving the Supreme Court against the interim order.
In his PIL, Puttaswamy has argued the government should not be allowed "to circumvent the legislature" and "avoid discussion, debate and voting" in Parliament. But the fact is that after it was introduced in Parliament in 2010, the government sat on the National Identification Authority Bill and it took a Supreme Court ruling for the Cabinet to clear the Bill on October 8, 2013.
Besides, not everything needs legislative sanction, though in a court of law, legislation has greater legal standing than executive orders. To extend the argument, the entire public distribution system (PDS), pension and scholarship programmes and a host of subsidy, including the fertiliser subsidy, have no legislative backing. In the case of PDS and education, the right to food and the right to education Acts were passed much after the actual programmes began.
The PIL also argued that the process of issuing the number requires biometrics, which impinges on privacy. Yet, it is the biometrics that makes Aadhaar unique and difficult to replicate, unlike other numbers such as the Permanent Account Number used for income tax purposes or even the voter's identity card.
So, despite Puttaswamy's petition arguing for it not being made mandatory, it is also true that the government has the right to ensure better disbursement of taxpayer money. Take the case of the cooking gas subsidy, which in 2012-13 stood at Rs 39,558 crore. In some 98 districts where DBT has been launched, it means the UPA government would be paying each consumer about Rs 4,797 a year to buy nine cylinders at current market rates only if they have an Aadhaar number seeded with the LPG consumer number and a bank account. But the crucial issues of Aadhaar's reach and the complex web of processes required before people avail of benefits that they were already accessing are certainly challenges the administration must address. For instance, when Aadhaar was made mandatory for cooking gas subsidy in 19 districts with a grace period of three months that ended on August 31, only around 13 per cent of the population was compliant in all respects. That does strengthen the case that a large majority of genuine consumers are being left out of a process that requires the Aadhaar number.
As things stand, 78 more districts have been added to the programme with 84 per cent of the population having Aadhaar numbers. Yet, just 24 per cent of the population is found to be fully compliant in 34 of these districts. At the same time, some state governments, too, have succeeded in creating some sort of DBT without the Aadhaar. This raises the issue of whether the massive exercise of Aadhaar could have been avoided since the option of National Population Registry (NPR) was already available. NPR currently uses Aadhaar as its backbone. The UPA government, keen to plug its fiscal deficit by streamlining subsidies, could have easily dovetailed biometrics through legislative sanction with NPR even for non-citizens rather than create a mammoth called Aadhaar with its attendant complications.
"Aadhaar infringes privacy"
The HinduThe Centre has told the Supreme Court that securing Aadhar cards was optional and it has not made it mandatory for the citizens. File photo
The Aadhaar scheme is unconstitutional as applicants are required to part with personal information on biometrics, iris and fingerprints, infringing their right to privacy, which is held part of the fundamental right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution, Justice K.S. Puttaswamy, retired judge of the Karnataka High Court, and other petitioners told the Supreme Court.
"There are no safeguards or penalties and no legislative backing for obtaining personal information, and the proposed law introduced by the government has been rejected by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance. Provisions for collection and retention of biometric data have been held impermissible in the United Kingdom and France by their top courts."
Justice Puttaswamy said linking of the Aadhaar number with food security under the new Act, LPG subsidy, the Employees' Provident Fund and other direct transfer of benefits made enrolment under the Aadhaar scheme mandatory, falsifying the government's claim that it was voluntary.
Moreover, he alleged, Aadhaar numbers were being given indiscriminately, including to migrants without papers, creating a serious threat to national security. The executive order was "mala fide" as the whole object of rushing through the Aadhaar scheme was to "secure political gains."
Denial of services
Senior counsel Anil Divan and counsel Ankit Goel, appearing for the petitioners, said Aadhaar resulted in denial of many benefits and services to persons who were otherwise eligible. They cited payment of salaries to teaching and non-teaching staff in Maharashtra only on the basis of Aadhaar; registration of marriages in Jharkhand; restriction of LPG connections.
Solicitor-General, Mohan Parasaran and Additional Solicitor-General L. Nageswara Rao, appearing for the Centre, however, said the Aadhaar card was voluntary and not mandatory, and, therefore, no interim directions were required.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/aadhaar-infringes-privacy/article5160686.ece?ref=relatedNews
Failed Number
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RANCHI, October 8, 2013
No Aadhaar, no scholarship to Jharkhand SC, ST students
Though the Supreme Court has ruled that Aadhaar membership is not mandatory for accessing benefits, thousands of students in Jharkhand government schools who missed enrolling for the scheme, are u... »
NEW DELHI, October 8, 2013
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NEW DELHI, October 6, 2013
Three oil PSUs move SC for modification of Aadhaar order
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TIRUCHI, October 2, 2013
Second round of Aadhaar registration camps from Thursday
City residents who are yet to register their biometric data for obtaining Aadhaar cards have got an opportunity to do so now. The second round of the special camps for recording biometri... »
http://www.thehindu.com/system/topicRoot/Aadhaar_and_cash_transfers/
अक्टूबर, 20111 में हिंदी लेखक व सामाजिक चिंतक प्रेमकुमार मणि ने 'फारवर्ड प्रेस' की कवर स्टोरी 'किसकी पूजा कर रहे हैं बहुजन' में अनेक विचारोत्तेजक सवाल उठाते हुए कहा था कि बंगाल की वेश्याएँ दुर्गा को अपने कुल का बताती हैं। जिस महिषासुर की दुर्गा ने हत्या की, वह भारत के (यादव) बहुजन तबके का था। इस प्रसंग को आदिवासी मामलों के जानकार लेखक अश्विनी कुमार पंकज ने फारवर्ड प्रेस के अक्टूबर, 2012 अंक में आगे बढाया था और महिषासुर को आदिवासी बताया. आज जब उत्तर भारत के कई शहरों में महिषासुर शहादत दिवस मनाए जाने की सूचना आ रही है, तो यह आवश्यक हो जाता है कि इस आयोजन के प्रस्तोताओं के मूल तर्कों को समझा जाए. प्रेमकुमार मणि का उपरोक्त लेख विभिन्न वेबसाइटों पर उपलब्ध है, जिसे आप गुगल करके खोज सकते हैं. अश्विनी कुमार पंकज का यह लेख वेब पर अभी तक उपलब्ध नहीं था.
देखो मुझे, महाप्रतापी महिषासुर की वंशज हूं मैं
-अश्विनी कुमार पंकज
विजयादशमी, दशहरा या नवरात्रि का हिन्दू धार्मिक उत्सव, असुर राजा महिषासुर व उसके अनुयायियों के आर्यों द्वारा वध और सामूहिक नरसंहार का अनुष्ठान है। समूचा वैदिक साहित्य सुर-असुर या देव-दानवों के युद्ध वर्णनों से भरा पड़ा है। लेकिन सच क्या है ? असुर कौन हैं? और भारतीय सभ्यता, संस्कृति और समाज-व्यवस्था के विकास में उनकी क्या भूमिका रही है?
इस दशहरा पर, आइये मैं आपका परिचय असुर वंश की एक युवती से करवाता हूं।
वास्तव में, सदियों से चले आ रहे असुरों के खिलाफ हिंसक रक्तपात के बावजूद आज भी झारखंड और छत्तीसगढ़ के कुछ इलाकों में 'असुरों' का अस्तित्व बचा हुआ है। ये असुर कहीं से हिंदू धर्मग्रंथों में वर्णित 'राक्षस' जैसे नहीं हैं। हमारी और आपकी तरह इंसान हैं। परंतु 21 वीं सदी के भारत में भी असुरों के प्रति न तो नजरिया बदला है और न ही उनके खिलाफ हमले बंद हुए हैं। शिक्षा, साहित्य, राजनीति आदि जीवन-समाज के सभी अंगों में 'राक्षसों' के खिलाफ प्रत्यक्ष-अप्रत्यक्ष ब्राह्मणवादी दृष्टिकोण का ही वर्चस्व है।
भारत सरकार ने 'असुर' को आदिम जनजाति की श्रेणी में रखा है। अर्थात् आदिवासियों में भी प्राचीन। घने जंगलों के बीच ऊंचाई पर बसे नेतरहाट पठार पर रहने वाली सुषमा इसी 'आदिम जनजाति' असुर समुदाय से आती है। सुषमा गांव सखुआपानी (डुम्बरपाट), पंचायत गुरदारी, प्रखण्ड बिशुनपुर, जिला गुमला (झारखंड) की रहने वाली है। वह अपने आदिम आदिवासी समुदाय असुर समाज की पहली रचनाकार है। यह साधारण बात नहीं है। क्योंकि वह उस असुर समुदाय से आती है जिसका लिखित अक्षरों से हाल ही में रिश्ता कायम हुआ है। सुषमा इंटर पास है पर अपने समुदाय के अस्तित्व के संकट को वह बखूबी पहचानती है। झारखंड का नेतरहाट, जो एक बेहद खूबसूरत प्राकृतिक रहवास है असुर आदिवासियों का, वह बिड़ला के बाक्साइट दोहन के कारण लगातार बदरंग हो रहा है। आदिम जनजातियों के लिए केन्द्र और झारखंड के राज्य सरकारों द्वारा आदिम जनजाति के लिए चलाए जा रहे विशेष कल्याणकारी कार्यक्रमों और बिड़ला के खनन उद्योग के बावजूद असुर आदिम आदिवासी समुदाय विकास के हाशिए पर है। वे अघोषित और अदृश्य युद्धों में लगातार मारे जा रहे हैं। वर्ष 1981 में झारखंड में असुरों की जनसंख्या 9100 थी जो वर्ष 2003 में घटकर 7793 रह गई है। जबकि आज की तारीख में छत्तीसगढ़ में असुरों की कुल आबादी महज 305 है। वैसे छत्तीसगढ़ के अगरिया आदिवासी समुदाय को वैरयर एल्विन ने असुर ही माना है। क्योंकि असुर और अगरिया दोनों ही समुदाय प्राचीन धातुवैज्ञानिक हैं जिनका परंपरागत पेशा लोहे का शोधन रहा है। आज के भारत का समूचा लोहा और स्टील उद्योग असुरों के ही ज्ञान के आधार पर विकसित हुआ है लेकिन उनकी दुनिया के औद्योगिक विकास की सबसे बड़ी कीमत भी इन्होंने ही चुकायी है। 1872 में जब देश में पहली जनगणना हुई थी, तब जिन 18 जनजातियों को मूल आदिवासी श्रेणी में रखा गया था, उसमें असुर आदिवासी पहले नंबर पर थे, लेकिन पिछले डेढ़ सौ सालों में इस आदिवासी समुदाय को लगातार पीछे ही धकेला गया है।
झारखंड और छत्तीसगढ़ के अलावा पश्चिम बंगाल के तराई इलाके में भी कुछ संख्या में असुर समुदाय रहते हैं। वहां के असुर बच्चे मिट्टी से बने शेर के खिलौनों से खेलते तो हैं, लेकिन उनके सिर काट कर। क्योंकि उनका विश्वास है कि शेर उस दुर्गा की सवारी है, जिसने उनके पुरखों का नरसंहार किया था।
बीबीसी की एक रपट में जलपाईगुड़ी ज़िले में स्थित अलीपुरदुआर के पास माझेरडाबरी चाय बागान में रहने वाले दहारू असुर कहते हैं, महिषासुर दोनों लोकों- यानी स्वर्ग और पृथ्वी, पर सबसे ज्यादा ताकतवर थे। देवताओं को लगता था कि अगर महिषासुर लंबे समय तक जीवित रहा तो लोग देवताओं की पूजा करना छोड़ देंगे। इसलिए उन सबने मिल कर धोखे से उसे मार डाला। महिषासुर के मारे जाने के बाद ही हमारे पूर्वजों ने देवताओं की पूजा बंद कर दी थी। हम अब भी उसी परंपरा का पालन कर रहे हैं।
सुषमा असुर भी झारखंड में यही सवाल उठाती है। वह कहती है, मैंने स्कूल की किताबों में पढ़ा है कि हमलोग राक्षस हैं और हमारे पूर्वज लोगों को सताने, लूटने, मारने का काम करते थे। इसीलिए देवताओं ने असुरों का संहार किया। हमारे पूर्वजों की सामूहिक हत्याएं की। हमारे समुदाय का नरसंहार किया। हमारे नरंसहारों के विजय की स्मृति में ही हिंदू लोग दशहरा जैसे त्योहारों को मनाते हैं। जबकि मैंने बचपन से देखा और महसूसा है कि हमने किसी का कुछ नहीं लूटा। उल्टे वे ही लूट.मार कर रहे हैं। बिड़ला हो, सरकार हो या फिर बाहरी समाज हो, इन सभी लोगों ने हमारे इलाकों में आकर हमारा सबकुछ लूटा और लूट रहे हैं। हमें अपने जल, जंगल, जमीन ही नहीं बल्कि हमारी भाषा-संस्कृति से भी हर रोज विस्थापित किया जा रहा है। तो आपलोग सोचिए राक्षस कौन है।
यहां यह जानना भी प्रासंगिक होगा कि भारत के अधिकांश आदिवासी समुदाय 'रावण' को अपना वंशज मानते हैं। दक्षिण के अनेक द्रविड़ समुदायों में रावण की आराधना का प्रचलन है। बंगाल, उड़ीसा, असम और झारखंड के आदिवासियों में सबसे बड़ा आदिवासी समुदाय 'संताल' भी स्वयं को रावण वंशज घोषित करता है। झारखंड-बंगाल के सीमावर्ती इलाके में तो बकायदा नवरात्रि या दशहरा के समय ही 'रावणोत्सव' का आयोजन होता है। यही नहीं संताल लोग आज भी अपने बच्चो का नाम 'रावण' रखते हैं। झारखंड में जब 2008 में 'यूनाइटेड प्रोग्रेसिव एलायंस', यूपीए) की सरकार बनी थी संताल आदिवासी समुदाय के शिबू सोरेन जो उस वक्त झारखंड के मुख्यमंत्री थे, उन्होंने रावण को महान विद्वान और अपना कुलगुरु बताते हुए दशहरे के दौरान रावण का पुतला जलाने से इंकार कर दिया था। मुख्यमंत्री रहते हुए सोरेन ने कहा था कि कोई व्यक्ति अपने कुलगुरु को कैसे जला सकता है, जिसकी वह पूजा करता है, गौरतलब है कि रांची के मोरहाबादी मैदान में पंजाबी और हिंदू बिरादरी संगठन द्वारा आयोजित विजयादशमी त्योहार के दिन मुख्यमंत्री द्वारा ही रावण के पुतले को जलाने की परंपरा है। भारत में आदिवासियों के सबसे बड़े बुद्विजीवी और अंतरराष्ट्रीय स्तर के विद्वान स्व. डा. रामदयाल मुण्डा का भी यही मत था।
ऐसा नहीं है कि सिर्फ आदिवासी समुदाय और दक्षिण भारत के द्रविड़ लोग ही रावण को अपना वंशज मानते हैं। पश्चिमी उत्तर प्रदेश के बदायूं के मोहल्ला साहूकारा में भी सालों पुराना रावण का एक मंदिर है, जहां उसकी प्रतिमा भगवान शिव से बड़ी है और जहां दशहरा शोक दिवस के रूप में मनाया जाता है। इसी तरह इंदौर में रावण प्रेमियों का एक संगठन है, लंकेश मित्र मंडल। राजस्थान के जोधपुर में गोधा एवं श्रीमाली समाज वहां के रावण मंदिर में प्रति वर्ष दशानन श्राद्ध कर्म का आयोजन करते हैं और दशहरे पर सूतक मानते हैं। गोधा एवं श्रीमाली समाज का मानना है कि रावण उनके पुरखे थे व उनकी रानी मंदोदरी यहीं के मंडोरकी थीं। पिछले वर्ष जेएनयू में भी दलित-आदिवासी और पिछड़े वर्ग के छात्रों ने ब्राह्मणवादी दशहरा के विरोध में आयोजन किया था।
सुषमा असुर पिछले वर्ष बंगाल में संताली समुदाय द्वारा आयोजित श्रावणोत्सव्य में बतौर मुख्य अतिथि शामिल हुई थी। अभी बहुत सारे लोग हमारे संगठन झारखंडी भाषा साहित्य संस्कृति अखडा को अप्रोच करते हैं सुषमा असुर को देखने, बुलाने और जानने के लिए। सुषमा दलित-आदिवासी और पिछड़े समुदायों के इसी सांस्कृतिक संगठन से जुड़ी हुई है। कई जगहों पर जा चुकी और नये निमंत्रणों पर सुषमा कहती है, 'मुझे आश्चर्य होता है कि पढ़ा-लिखा समाज और देश अभी भी हम असुरों को ई सिरों, बड़े-बड़े दांतो-नाखुनों और छल-कपट जादू जानने वाला जैसा ही राक्षस मानता है। लोग मुझमे राक्षस ढूंढते हैं, पर उन्हें निराशा हाथ लगती है। बड़ी मुश्किल से वे स्वीकार कर पाते हैं कि मैं भी उन्हीं की तरह एक इंसान हूं। हमारे प्रति यह भेदभाव और शोषण-उत्पीडऩ का रवैया बंद होना चाहिए। अगर समाज हमें इंसान मानता है तो उसे अपने सारे धार्मिक पूर्वाग्रहों को तत्काल छोडऩा होगा और सार्वजनिक अपमान व नस्लीय संहार के उत्सव विजयादशमी को राष्ट्रीय शर्म के दिन के रूप में बदलना होगा।'
( यह लेख फारवर्ड प्रेस के अक्टूरबर, 2012 अंक में छपा है। फॉरवर्ड प्रेस भारत की पहली संपूर्ण अंग्रेजी–हिंदी मासिक पत्रिका है जो भारत के दलित और पिछड़े वर्ग पर एक नजरिया प्रदान करती है। फारवर्ड प्रेस से संबंधित किसी भी प्रकार की जानकारी प्राप्त करने के लिए अपने फोन नंबर के साथ इस पते पर ईमेल कर सकते हैं :info@forwardpress.in )
— with Ak Pankaj, Jitendra Yadav and Arun Obc.
Lenin Raghuvanshi shared PVCHR's photo.
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Tarun Kanti Thakur
****অষ্টাদশ মহাপুরান সত্যি কি বেদব্যাশের লেখা নাকি অষ্টম শতাব্দীতে শংকরাচার্য কুমারীল ভট্ট দ্বারা গৌতম বুদ্ধকে বিষ্ণুর অবতার ঘোষনার পর লেখা হয়েছে ????
অষ্টাদশ মহাপুরান কি কি ;--ব্রহ্ম পুরাণ,পদ্ম পুরাণ ,বিষ্ণু পুরাণ , শিবপুরাণ, ভাগবতপুরাণ,বৃহন্নারদীয়পুরাণ, মার্কন্ডয়পুরাণ , আগ্নিপুরাণ, ব্রহ্মবৈবর্ত্তপুরাণ , লিঙ্গপুরাণ, বরাহপুরাণ, ভবিষ্যপুরাণ, স্কন্দপুরাণ, বামনপুরাণ, মৎস্যপুরাণ, কুর্মপুরাণ, গরুড়পুরাণ, ব্রহ্মান্ডপুরাণ ৷
বলা হয় এর সব গুলিই বেদব্যাস দ্বারা রচিত ৷কিন্তু এর একখানাও বেদব্যাস দ্বারা রচিত নয় তার প্রমান নিচে দেওয়া হল ৷এই সকল পুরাণের সৃষ্টি রহস্য থেকেই এর ্রমান জানা যাবে দিনের আলোর মত সুস্পষ্ট ভাবে ৷যদি সবগুলি বেদব্যাস দ্বারা রচিত হত তবে সৃষ্টি রহস্য বিষয়ও সব পুরাণে একই হত ৷অথচ এক এক পুরাণে আলাদা আলাদা বিপরিত কথা বলা হয়েছে ৷ সুতারং স্পষ্ট বোঝা যাচ্ছে -জাতবিলাসি সার্থপর মনুবাদী কবিরা ইচ্ছাকৃত ভাবেই মহাকবি বেদব্যাসে নামে তথাকথীত উচ্চ বর্ণের সার্থে সুবিধামত চালিয়ে দিয়েছে ৷ র প্রমান হিসাবে বলা যায় -মার্কন্ডেয় পুরাণের চন্ডীর ৮ম অধ্যায়ে মৌর্য কথার উল্লেখ রয়েছে ৷ বিষ্ণুপুরাণের দশ অবতারের মধ্যে শেষ অবতার গৌতমবুদ্ধ ৷ গৌতম বু্দ্ধকে অষ্টম শতাবব্দ পর্যন্ত ব্রাহ্মণেরা বৈদিক ধর্মের অঙ্গ হিসাবে স্বীকার করেনি ৷ ব্রহ্মবৈবর্ত্তপুরাণের প্রকৃতিখন্ডে 'সাবিত্রী সহ শমনের কথোপকথন উপখ্যানে বৌদ্ধ সম্মন্ধে বলাহয়েছে --
যেই বিপ্র বৌদ্ধগৃহে করয়ে ভোজন ৷
তাহার দুর্গতি হয় শাস্ত্রের বচন ৷৷
মহাপাপে লিপ্ত হয় সেই হীনচার ৷
তিন কুল সহ যায় নরক-মাঝার ৷৷
এর থেকে প্রমান হয় বৌদ্ধ ধর্ম স্থাপনর আনেক পর ব্রহ্মবৈবর্ত্তপুরান লিখিত হয়েছে ৷তবে বেদব্যাসের নামে কেন এই পুরাণ ?কারন সুস্পষ্ট যে মনুবাদী লেখক ও কবিগন স্বজাতির স্বার্থ রক্ষার্থে এই সব পুরান গুলি এমন ভাবে রচনা করেছেন যার মধ্যে এহেন মিথ্যা নেই যাতে শূদ্র নামধারী লোকের সর্বনাশের পথ নেই ৷
সৃষ্টি রহস্যে কে কি বলছে দেখাযাক --
১৷ ব্রহ্মবৈবর্ত্ত পুরাণে : শ্রীকৃষ্ণের ডান অঙ্গ থেকে হ্ব্রহ্মা , বাম অঙ্গ থেকে শিব ,বক্ষ থেকে বিষ্ণু ,ললাট থেকে দূর্গা ,এমনি ভাবে জীবজগত ,অর্থাৎ কিটাদি সকল জীবের সৃষ্টি হয়েছে ৷ যেন বিশাল কাঠাল গাছ আর কি ৷
২৷ বিষ্ণু পুরাণ :এ পুরাণে বিষ্ণুই সৃষ্টি স্হিতি -লয় র্তা ৷তবে পার্থক্য এ যে এখানে বিষ্ণ নিরাকার শক্তি ৷ এ পুরানে ব্রহ্মা শিব কৃষ্ণের কোন উল্লেখ নগন্য ,নে বললে চলে ৷ এই পুরানে এক জায়গায় বলা হয়েছে বিষ্ণুকে স্মরণ করা মাত্র শিবর প্রতি ঘৃনা সৃষ্ট হয় মনে ৷অর্থাৎ পাপ লেখে কপালে ৷
৩৷ শিব পুরাণ :এতে বলা হয়েছে শিবের নাভি কমল থেকে ব্রহ্মা উৎপন্ন হয়েছেন ৷
৪৷ মৎস পুরাণ :এখানে বলেছে ,ব্রহ্মা বিষ্ণুর নাভিপদ্ম হে উৎপন্ন হয়ে শিবকে সৃষ্টি করলেন ৷
৫৷ নারদীয় পুরাণ :এখানে নারায়ণের দক্ষিনঙ্গ থেকে ব্রহ্মা বাম অঙ্গ থেকে বিষ্ণু ও মধ্যভাগ থেকে মহেশ (শিব) প্রকট হয়েছেন ৷
৬৷ দেবীপুরাণ : দেবী ব্রহ্মা বিষ্ণু মহেশ তিন জন কে সৃষ্টি করলেন এবং এদের তিন জনকে পতিরূপে বরণ করতে চাইলেন ৷
৭৷ মার্কন্ডেয় পুরাণ :এতে মহালক্ষী হতে বিষ্ণু , মহাকালি হতে মহাদেব ,ও মহাসরস্বতী থেকে ব্রহ্মার উৎপত্তি হোল ,এবং কৃষ্ণও জন্ম নিলেন ৷
৮৷ পদ্মা পুরাণ :এই পুরাণ শিবকে শূদ্রদেবতা অস্পৃশ্য অসুচি বলা হয়েছে ৷এমন কি এর এক জায়গায় বলা হয়েছে যে ,শিবকে প্রদেয় প্রসাদ পুরষ ( মল বা বিষ্ঠা )তুল্য ৷ যে ব্রাহ্মণ মোহবশতঃ একবার মাত্রও সে প্রসাদ ভক্ষণ করে তাকে নিশ্চই চন্ডাল বলে জানবে ৷এবং সে ও তার পিতা নরকানগ্নিতে দগ্ধ হয় ৷ তার জন্য আজও ব্রাহ্মণেরা শিবের প্রসাদ খায় না ৷
সব পুরাণেই দেখা যায় বিষ্ণু বা নারায়ণের স্ত্রী লক্ষী , পার্বতী শিবের স্ত্রী ,সরস্বতী ব্রহ্মার স্ত্রী ৷ এথেকে এটাই প্রমান হয় যে পুরানে যে যে স্ত্রীকে ব্রহ্মা বিষ্ণু শিব পত্নী বা স্ত্রী রূপে পেয়েছেন তারাই আবার গর্ভধারিনী মাতা ৷ মানে মা হলেন স্ত্রী ৷ তাই যদি বলি পুরাণকারগন গাঁজার দমে টান মেরে সুরা পানে মত্ত হয়ে মাতাল হয়ে পুরাণ প্রনয়ন করেছেন তাহলে অপরাধ কোথায় ৷
তাই বলতে পারা যায় এগুলি আমাদের বাস্তবিক কোন ধর্মশাস্ত্র হতে পারে না ৷৷
Share · October 12 at 8:29pm
Abhishek Srivastava
मैंने आज तक किसी अभिनेत्री का ऐसा साक्षात्कार न देखा, न सुना है। जबरदस्त कनविक्शन, सादापन, ईमानदारी, व्यावहारिकता, आत्मस्वीकार और आत्मालोचना भरा इंटरव्यू है ये। फिल्म के दीवानों से लेकर सभी कलाकारों, लेखकों, पत्रकारों और स्त्रीवादियों को इसे तसल्लीबख्श सुनना चाहिए ताकि वे अपने भीतर झांक सकें और अपनी-अपनी कामयाबी के सामाजिक स्तर के अनुरूप खुद में भरी हुई आत्ममुग्धता और स्वयंभू तत्व से मुक्ति पा सकें।
Avinash Das Prakash K Ray Panini Anand Rangnath Singh Sushant JhaVishwa Deepak Vishnu Sharma Dilip Khan Nikhil Anand Giri Vineet Kumar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7nYY1_3LFE#t=14
Finally A Bollywood Actor Interview That Makes Perfect Sense. And You'll Be Surprised Who It Is
If you have to watch only one Bollywood actor interview in your life time, this should be it.
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Children Voice India
बिरसा मुण्डा जनमित्र सामुदायिक केंद्र का उद्घाटन
वाराणसी जिले के बडागांव ब्लाक स्थित बरहीं कलां गाँव के मुसहर बस्ती मेंआदिवासी महानायक बिरसा मुण्डा के नाम पर मानवाधिकार जननिगरानी समिति द्वारा बच्चों के लिए कार्यरत अमेरिकी संस्था ग्लोबल फण्ड फार चिल्ड्रेन के आर्थिक सहयोग से आदिवासी महानायक बिरसा मुण्डा जनमित्र सामुदायिक केंद्र का निर्माण कराया गया है |इस केंद्र के निर्माण के बाद अब बस्ती के छोटे बच्चों को आंगनबाड़ी की प्रतिदिन सेवा और देखभाल मिलने की सम्भावना बढ़ गयी है, इसके पहले विपरीत मौसम बारिश अधिक गर्मी अधिक ठंढ में यह केंद्र कम ही खुलता था | आंगनबाड़ी कार्यकर्ती ललिता देवी केंद्र का सामान कंहा रखतीं, बस्ती में इन मुसहर परिवारों के घर तो फूस की झोपडी के थे, कुछ के घर पक्के सरकारी इंदिरा आवास हैं भी बहुत जर्जर स्तिथि में. ऐसे घरों में सामान रखने में हमेशा डर बना रहता है क़ी कब घर गिर जायेगा तो उसमे रखा सामान भी नष्ट हो जायेगा | आज यह केंद्र समिति द्वारा समुदाय की निगरानी में आंगनबाड़ी कार्यकर्ती को दिया गया |
आज बिरसा मुण्डा सामुदायिक केंद्र का उद्घाटनवरिष्ठ पत्रकार एवं दैनिक समाचार पत्र जनसंदेश टाइम्स के उप समाचार सम्पादक श्री. विजय विनीत जी के द्वारा फीता काटकर उद्घाटन किया गया उसके बाद मुख्य अतिथि (श्री. विजय विनीत जी) ने बच्चों के साथ खीर खाया | साथ ही 27 मुसहर बच्चों को स्कूल बैग, कापी, पेन्सिल, रबर, कटर, रंग, पेन्सिल बाक्स आदि सभी बच्चों को वितरित किया गया. साथ ही आंगनवाड़ी केंद्र में नामांकित सभी बच्चों के लिए रंग, ड्राइंग कापी, रबर, पेन्सिल, कटर, कहानियों की किताबें, तरह तरह के ब्रांडेड खिलौने एवं ब्रांडेड झूले आदि आंगनबाड़ी कार्यकर्ती सुश्री ललिता देवी को सौंपा. जिससे आंगनबाड़ी में आने वाले बच्चों का निमितिकरन व ठहराव हो सके | इन बच्चों का भी इन संसाधनों के बीच शारीरिक और मानसिक विकास हो सके |
आज के इस अवसर पर मुसहर परिवारों द्वारा अपनी लोक संस्कृति के उत्सव गीत -- मुसहरहुवा, ककरहुवा एवं बिरहा आदि सांस्कृतिक गीतों से पूरे माहौल को झंकृत कर दिया जिसमे गायक दिनेश कन्नौजिया आदि प्रमुख रूप रहे |इसी कार्यक्रम में समिति द्वारा डा० राकेश सिंह, प्रभारी प्राथमिक स्वास्थ्य केंद्र बसनी बडागांव को "जनमित्र सम्मान" प्रभारी प्रधानाध्यापक श्री. सुनील कुमार, एवं शिक्षामित्र अध्यापक श्रीसंदीप कुमार दुबे द्वय को "नवदलित सम्मान"प्रशस्ति पत्र और शाल ओढ़ाकर सम्मानित किया गया |
विजय विनीत जी ने कहाकि, बिरसा मुण्डा अपने छोटे से जीवनकाल में अन्धविश्वास और सामाजिक कुरीतियों के खिलाफ आदिवासी समाज को जागृत करते रहे.उन्होंने सामाजिक आर्थिक राजनितिक स्तर की गुलामी के खिलाफ आवाज उठाई बेगारी प्रथा के खिलाफ जबरदस्त आन्दोलन किया इनके जीवन से प्रेरणा लेते हुए अपने जीवन में शिक्षा के महत्त्व को समझते हुए गुलामी बेगारी का विरोध कर सामाजिक विकास की सरकारी योजनाओं तक अपनी पहुच बनाना होगा |
कार्यक्रम का संचालन इरशाद अहमद ने किया एवं अतिथियों को धन्यवाद ज्ञापन डा. राजीव सिंह ने दिया, कार्यकम में आसपास के कई गाँवो से सैकड़ों की संख्या में जन समुदायों की भागीदारी रही | समिति के महासचिव डा. लेनिन,श्रुति,शिरिन शबाना खान सहित जमीनी स्तर के कार्यकर्ता आनन्द प्रकाश, शोभनाथ, बृजेश, सुभाष, प्रतिमा, छाया, संध्या, शिव प्रताप चौबे, आदि कार्यकर्ताओं ने भागीदारी की |
विदित हो की माह जनवरी से मुसहर बच्चों को समिति द्वारा प्रतिदिन एक गिलास दूध दिया जाता है जो उनके कुपोषण को रोकने बड़ा सहायक है |पिछले वर्ष यहीं के चौदह बच्चे अति गम्भीर कुपोषण का शिकार हो गये थे जिसके बाद ग्लोबल फण्ड फार चिल्ड्रन के सहयोग से समिति इन बच्चों के विकास में जुटी है
श्रुति नागवंशी
मैनेजिंग ट्रस्टी
+91-9935599330
आज का दिन न सिर्फ बरहीं कलां के लिए ऐतिहासिक दिन है बल्कि हमसब के लिए यादगार दिन रहेगा, बिरसा मुण्डा जनमित्र सामुदायिक केंद्र के उद्घाटन के बाद आज हम हमेशा की तरह समाज में अभिनव कार्य करने वाले कुछ हस्तियों को हम आपके बीच सम्मानित कर उनका आभार व्यक्त करेंगे | हम जानते हैं की धारा से अलग हटकर समाज के लिए काम करने का रास्ता आसन नही होता है और इस रास्ते में कितनी रुकावटें बाधाओं का सामना करना पड़ता है | ऐसे में समाज की इन हस्तियो को सम्मानित कर हम दूसरों के लिए रोल माडल आदर्श सभी के सामने लाना चाहते हैं | इसी क्रम में आज हम (1)चिकित्सा प्रभारी प्राथमिक स्वास्थ्य केंद्र बसनी बडागांव डा० राकेश कुमार सिंह जी, (2) प्रभारी प्रधानाध्यापक प्राथमिक विद्यालय असवारी बडागांव श्री. सुनील कुमार जी, (3) श्री. संदीप कुमार दुबे जी शिक्षामित्र प्राथमिक विद्यालय नथईपुर बडागांव को यह सम्मान हमारे मुख्य अतिथि वरिष्ठ पत्रकार श्री. विजय विनीत जी द्वारा सम्मानित किया जायेगा |
श्री. विजय विनीत जी लम्बे समय से अपनी लेखनी के माध्यम से समाज के हाशिये पर जीवन जीने को बाध्य समुदायों के मुद्दों को समाज के सामने लाकर उनके हक अधिकारों की पैरवी करते रहते हैं आपके लेखन को शासन प्रशासन द्वारा बड़ी गम्भीरता से लेते हुए सकारात्मक बदलावों की दिशा में कार्य किया जाता है | आप वास्तव में समाज के सजग प्रहरी हैं
1 . जनमित्र सम्मान –(जनमित्र समाज की रचना हेतु)
चिकित्सा प्रभारी प्राथमिक स्वास्थ्य केंद्र बसनी बडागांव डा० राकेश कुमार सिंह जी को हम जनमित्र सम्मान से सम्मानित करते हुए गौरवान्वित महसूस कर रहे हैं | डा० राकेश कुमार सिंह द्वारा प्राथमिक स्वास्थ्य केंद्र बसनीबडागांव में सामाजिक रूप से वंचित समुदायों को गुणवत्तापूर्ण स्वास्थ्य सेवाएँ प्रदान करने, प्राथमिक स्वास्थ्य केंद्र में चिकित्सा संसाधनो में गुणवत्तापूर्ण सुधार एवं सरकारी चिकित्सा केन्द्रों के प्रति समुदाय का विश्वास जगाने का कार्य किया है | जिससे इन समुदायों में अन्धविश्वास व रुढ़िवादी सोच में परिवर्तन आया है |
2 . नवदलित सम्मान – (श्रेणीकृत समाज से मुक्ति और नागरिक अधिकारों की स्थापना हेतु)
प्रभारी प्रधानाध्यापक प्राथमिक विद्यालय असवारी बडागांव श्री. सुनील कुमार जी को हम नवदलित सम्मान से सम्मानित करते हुए गौरवान्वित महसूस कर रहे हैं | आप द्वारा वंचित समुदाय के बीच शिक्षा के महत्त्व को स्थापित करने एवं संसाधनो के आभाव से जूझते हुए भी बच्चों को गुणवत्तापूर्ण शिक्षा एवं अभिनव क्षमता निर्माण करने का कार्य किया गया है |
3 . नवदलित सम्मान – श्री. संदीप कुमार दुबे जी शिक्षामित्र प्राथमिक विद्यालय नथईपुर बडागांव को हम नवदलित सम्मान से सम्मानित करते हुए गौरवान्वित महसूस कर रहे हैं |
आप द्वारा समाज के जाति बंधन से मुक्त होकर वंचित एवं दलित समुदाय के बच्चों को प्राथमिक शिक्षा से जोड़ते हुए विद्यालय में ठहराव एवं गुणवत्तापूर्ण शिक्षा प्रदान करने के लिए मानवाधिकार जननिगरानी समिति बहुत ही गौरव महसूस कर रही है |
BBC World News
France has summoned the US ambassador over claims that the US routinely spied on millions of phone calls in France.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24607880
The French newspaper, Le Monde, cites documents leaked by the fugitive American intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, which it says showed that more than 70 million calls were taped during a thirty-day period earlier this year.
The French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he was "deeply shocked" by these claims....See More
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Gladson Dungdung
We, Indigenous peoples of 9 countries of Asia discussed and shared our issues, experiences and challenges in Chiang Mai (creative Thailand) from 16 to 19 of October, 2013. The conclusion is the Indigenous people across Asia are facing the same issues, experiences and challenges. Therefore, we have affirmed to fight for protection of our land, territory and resources by using the democratic ways and means. You all are highly welcome to join the fight for protection of rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Asia. — Indigenous Peoples of Asia (15 photos)
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BBC World News
There have been heavy clashes in Rio de Janeiro.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-24605389
Brazilian security forces and protesters- opposed to the auction of Brazil's biggest oilfield- have clashed in Barra da Tijuca.
Rubber bullets and tear gas were fired at demonstrators who've been staging their protest outside the hotel where the auction is to be held. ...See More
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Xavier Dias shared Gloria Torres's photo.
The Business of America Is War Disaster Capitalism on the Battlefield and in the Boardroom "There is a new normal in America: our government may shut down, but our wars continue. Congress may not be able to pass a budget, but the U.S. military can still launch commando raids in Libya and Somalia, the Afghan War can still be prosecuted, Italy can be garrisoned by American troops (putting the "empire" back in Rome), Africa can be used as an imperial playground (as in the late nineteenth century "scramble for Africa," but with the U.S. and China doing the scrambling this time around), and the military-industrial complex can still dominate the world's arms trade. In the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, it's business as usual, if your definition of "business" is the power and profits you get from constantly preparing for and prosecuting wars around the world. "War is a racket," General Smedley Butler famously declared in 1935, and even now it's hard to disagree with a man who had two Congressional Medals of Honor to his credit and was intimately familiar with American imperialism. War Is Politics, Right? Once upon a time, as a serving officer in the U.S. Air Force, I was taught that Carl von Clausewitz had defined war as a continuation of politics by other means. This definition is, in fact, a simplification of his classic and complex book, On War, written after his experiences fighting Napoleon in the early nineteenth century. The idea of war as a continuation of politics is both moderately interesting and dangerously misleading: interesting because it connects war to political processes and suggests that they should be fought for political goals; misleading because it suggests that war is essentially rational and so controllable. The fault here is not Clausewitz's, but the American military's for misreading and oversimplifying him. Perhaps another "Carl" might lend a hand when it comes to helping Americans understand what war is really all about. I'm referring to Karl Marx, who admired Clausewitz, notably for his idea that combat is to war what a cash payment is to commerce. However seldom combat (or such payments) may happen, they are the culmination and so the ultimate arbiters of the process. War, in other words, is settled by killing, a bloody transaction that echoes the exploitative exchanges of capitalism. Marx found this idea to be both suggestive and pregnant with meaning. So should we all. Following Marx, Americans ought to think about war not just as an extreme exercise of politics, but also as a continuation of exploitative commerce by other means. Combat as commerce: there's more in that than simple alliteration. In the history of war, such commercial transactions took many forms, whether as territory conquered, spoils carted away, raw materials appropriated, or market share gained. Consider American wars. The War of 1812 is sometimes portrayed as a minor dust-up with Britain, involving the temporary occupation and burning of our capital, but it really was about crushing Indians on the frontier and grabbing their land. The Mexican-American War was another land grab, this time for the benefit of slaveholders. The Spanish-American War was a land grab for those seeking an American empire overseas, while World War I was for making the world "safe for democracy" -- and for American business interests globally. Even World War II, a war necessary to stop Hitler and Imperial Japan, witnessed the emergence of the U.S. as the arsenal of democracy, the world's dominant power, and the new imperial stand-in for a bankrupt British Empire. Korea? Vietnam? Lots of profit for the military-industrial complex and plenty of power for the Pentagon establishment. Iraq, the Middle East, current adventures in Africa? Oil, markets, natural resources, global dominance. In societal calamities like war, there will always be winners and losers. But the clearest winners are often companies like Boeing and Dow Chemical, which provided B-52 bombers and Agent Orange, respectively, to the U.S. military in Vietnam. Such "arms merchants" -- an older, more honest term than today's "defense contractor" -- don't have to pursue the hard sell, not when war and preparations for it have become so permanently, inseparably intertwined with the American economy, foreign policy, and our nation's identity as a rugged land of "warriors" and "heroes" (more on that in a moment). War as Disaster Capitalism Consider one more definition of war: not as politics or even as commerce, but as societal catastrophe. Thinking this way, we can apply Naomi Klein's concepts of the "shock doctrine" and "disaster capitalism" to it. When such disasters occur, there are always those who seek to turn a profit. Most Americans are, however, discouraged from thinking about war this way thanks to the power of what we call "patriotism" or, at an extreme, "superpatriotism" when it applies to us, and the significantly more negative "nationalism" or "ultra-nationalism" when it appears in other countries. During wars, we're told to "support our troops," to wave the flag, to put country first, to respect the patriotic ideal of selfless service and redemptive sacrifice (even if all but 1% of us are never expected to serve or sacrifice). We're discouraged from reflecting on the uncomfortable fact that, as "our" troops sacrifice and suffer, others in society are profiting big time. Such thoughts are considered unseemly and unpatriotic. Pay no attention to the war profiteers, who pass as perfectly respectable companies. After all, any price is worth paying (or profits worth offering up) to contain the enemy -- not so long ago, the red menace, but in the twenty-first century, the murderous terrorist. Forever war is forever profitable. Think of the Lockheed Martins of the world. In their commerce with the Pentagon, as well as the militaries of other nations, they ultimately seek cash payment for their weapons and a world in which such weaponry will be eternally needed. In the pursuit of security or victory, political leaders willingly pay their price. Call it a Clausewitzian/Marxian feedback loop or the dialectic of Carl and Karl. It also represents the eternal marriage of combat and commerce. If it doesn't catch all of what war is about, it should at least remind us of the degree to which war as disaster capitalism is driven by profit and power. For a synthesis, we need only turn from Carl or Karl to Cal -- President Calvin Coolidge, that is. "The business of America is business," he declared in the Roaring Twenties. Almost a century later, the business of America is war, even if today's presidents are too polite to mention that the business is booming. America's War Heroes as Commodities Many young people today are, in fact, looking for a release from consumerism. In seeking new identities, quite a few turn to the military. And it provides. Recruits are hailed as warriors and warfighters, as heroes, and not just within the military either, but by society at large. Yet in joining the military and being celebrated for that act, our troops paradoxically become yet another commodity, another consumable of the state. Indeed, they become consumed by war and its violence. Their compensation? To be packaged and marketed as the heroes of our militarized moment. Steven Gardiner, a cultural anthropologist and U.S. Army veteran, has written eloquently about what he calls the "heroic masochism" of militarized settings and their allure for America's youth. Put succinctly, in seeking to escape a consumerism that has lost its meaning and find a release from dead-end jobs, many volunteers are transformed into celebrants of violence, seekers and givers of pain, a harsh reality Americans ignore as long as that violence is acted out overseas against our enemies and local populations. Such "heroic" identities, tied so closely to violence in war, often prove poorly suited to peacetime settings. Frustration and demoralization devolve into domestic violence and suicide. In an American society with ever fewer meaningful peacetime jobs, exhibiting greater and greater polarization of wealth and opportunity, the decisions of some veterans to turn to or return to mind-numbing drugs of various sorts and soul-stirring violence is tragically predictable. That it stems from their exploitative commodification as so many heroic inflictors of violence in our name is a reality most Americans are content to forget. You May Not Be Interested in War, but War Is Interested in You As Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky pithily observed, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." If war is combat and commerce, calamity and commodity, it cannot be left to our political leaders alone -- and certainly not to our generals. When it comes to war, however far from it we may seem to be, we're all in our own ways customers and consumers. Some pay a high price. Many pay a little. A few gain a lot. Keep an eye on those few and you'll end up with a keener appreciation of what war is actually all about. No wonder our leaders tell us not to worry our little heads about our wars -- just support those troops, go shopping, and keep waving that flag. If patriotism is famously the last refuge of the scoundrel, it's also the first recourse of those seeking to mobilize customers for the latest bloodletting exercise in combat as commerce. Just remember: in the grand bargain that is war, it's their product and their profit. And that's no bargain for America, or for that matter for the world." William Astore 20 October 2013 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175762/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_war%21_what_is_it_good_for_profit_and_power/ --- Image: Great Deeds Against the Death - The Disasters of War - Plate 39 By the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya, created between 1810 and 1820 - jpg ---
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Dilip C Mandal
जब अमेरिका एक सांवली भारतीय लड़की को मिस अमेरिका बनाता है, तब आपने सुंदरता की ऐसी जबरिया परिभाषा बना डाली कि भारत में हिरोइनें यूरोप से और वेश्याएं पूर्वी यूरोप और पूर्व सोवियत संघ के एशियाई गणराज्यों से आ रही हैं.
गोरेपन के लिए भारतीय दीवानगी के साइड इफेक्ट्स.....http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/the+new+white+flesh+trade/1/80283.html
The new white flesh trade : Cover Story - India Today
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Surveillance
Surveillance (/sərˈveɪ.əns/ or /sərˈveɪləns/)[1] is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people for the purpose of influencing, managing, directing, or protecting them.[2] This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment (such as CCTV cameras), or interception of electronically transmitted information (such as Internet traffic or phone calls); and it can refer to simple, relatively no- or low-technology methods such as human intelligence agents and postal interception. The word surveillance comes from a French phrase for "watching over" ("sur" means "from above" and "veiller" means "to watch")
Surveillance is very useful to governments and law enforcement to maintain social control, recognize and monitor threats, and prevent/investigate criminal activity. With the advent of programs such as the Total Information Awareness program and ADVISE, technologies such as high speed surveillance computers and biometrics software, and laws such as the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, governments now possess an unprecedented ability to monitor the activities of their subjects.[3]
However, many civil rights and privacy groups, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union, have expressed concern that by allowing continual increases in government surveillance of citizens we will end up in amass surveillance society, with extremely limited, or non-existent political and/or personal freedoms. Fears such as this have led to numerous lawsuits such as Hepting v. AT&T.[3][4]
Contents
[hide]- 1 Types
- 2 Controversy
- 3 Counter-surveillance, inverse surveillance, sousveillance
- 4 In popular culture
- 5 See also
- 6 References
- 7 Further reading
- 8 External links
Types[edit]
Computer[edit]
The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of data and traffic on theInternet.[5] In the United States for example, under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, all phone calls and broadband Internet traffic (emails, web traffic, instant messaging, etc.) are required to be available for unimpeded real-time monitoring by Federal law enforcement agencies.[6][7][8]
There is far too much data on the Internet for human investigators to manually search through all of it. So automated Internet surveillance computers sift through the vast amount of intercepted Internet traffic and identify and report to human investigators traffic considered interesting by using certain "trigger" words or phrases, visiting certain types of web sites, or communicating via email or chat with suspicious individuals or groups.[9] Billions of dollars per year are spent, by agencies such as the Information Awareness Office, NSA, and the FBI, to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems such as Carnivore, NarusInsight, and ECHELON to intercept and analyze all of this data, and extract only the information which is useful to law enforcement and intelligence agencies.[10]
Computers can be a surveillance target because of the personal data stored on them. If someone is able to install software, such as the FBI's Magic Lantern and CIPAV, on a computer system, they can easily gain unauthorized access to this data. Such software could be installed physically or remotely.[11] Another form of computer surveillance, known as van Eck phreaking, involves reading electromagnetic emanations from computing devices in order to extract data from them at distances of hundreds of meters.[12][13] The NSA runs a database known as "Pinwale", which stores and indexes large numbers of emails of both American citizens and foreigners.[14][15]
Telephones[edit]
The official and unofficial tapping of telephone lines is widespread. In the United States for instance, the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requires that all telephone and VoIP communications be available for real-time wiretapping by Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.[6][7][8] Two major telecommunications companies in the U.S.—AT&T Inc. andVerizon—have contracts with the FBI, requiring them to keep their phone call records easily searchable and accessible for Federal agencies, in return for $1.8 million per year.[16] Between 2003 and 2005, the FBI sent out more than 140,000 "National Security Letters" ordering phone companies to hand over information about their customers' calling and Internet histories. About half of these letters requested information on U.S. citizens.[17]
Human agents are not required to monitor most calls. Speech-to-text software creates machine-readable text from intercepted audio, which is then processed by automated call-analysis programs, such as those developed by agencies such as the Information Awareness Office, or companies such as Verint, and Narus, which search for certain words or phrases, to decide whether to dedicate a human agent to the call.[18]
Law enforcement and intelligence services in the United Kingdom and the United States possess technology to activate the microphones in cell phones remotely, by accessing phones' diagnostic or maintenance features in order to listen to conversations that take place near the person who holds the phone.[19][20][21][22][23][24]
Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data. The geographical location of a mobile phone (and thus the person carrying it) can be determined easily even when the phone is not being used, using a technique known as multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone.[25][26] The legality of such techniques has been questioned in the United States, in particular whether a court warrant is required.[27] Records forone carrier alone (Sprint), showed that in a given year federal law enforcement agencies requested customer location data 8 million times.[28]
Cameras[edit]
Surveillance cameras are video cameras used for the purpose of observing an area. They are often connected to a recording device or IP network, and may be watched by a security guard or law enforcement officer. Cameras and recording equipment used to be relatively expensive and required human personnel to monitor camera footage, but analysis of footage has been made easier by automated software that organizes digital video footage into a searchable database, and by video analysis software (such as VIRAT and HumanID). The amount of footage is also drastically reduced by motion sensors which only record when motion is detected. With cheaper production techniques, surveillance cameras are simple and inexpensive enough to be used in home security systems, and for everyday surveillance.
In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security awards billions of dollars per year in Homeland Security grants for local, state, and federal agencies to install modern video surveillance equipment. For example, the city of Chicago, Illinois, recently used a $5.1 million Homeland Security grant to install an additional 250 surveillance cameras, and connect them to a centralized monitoring center, along with its preexisting network of over 2000 cameras, in a program known as Operation Virtual Shield. Speaking in 2009, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley announced that Chicago would have a surveillance camera on every street corner by the year 2016.[29][30]
As part of China's Golden Shield Project, several U.S. corporations, including IBM, General Electric, and Honeywell, have been working closely with the Chinese government to install millions of surveillance cameras throughout China, along with advanced video analytics and facial recognition software, which will identify and track individuals everywhere they go. They will be connected to a centralized database and monitoring station, which will, upon completion of the project, contain a picture of the face of every person in China: over 1.3 billion people.[31] Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China's "Information Security Technology" office (which is in charge of the project), credits the surveillance systems in the United States and the U.K. as the inspiration for what he is doing with the Golden Shield project.[31]
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a research project called Combat Zones That See that will link up cameras across a city to a centralized monitoring station, identify and track individuals and vehicles as they move through the city, and report "suspicious" activity (such as waving arms, looking side-to-side, standing in a group, etc.).[32]
At Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, police in Tampa, Florida, used Identix's facial recognition software, FaceIt, to scan the crowd for potential criminals and terrorists in attendance at the event [33] (it found 19 people with pending arrest warrants).[34]
Governments often[citation needed] initially claim that cameras are meant to be used for traffic control, but many of them end up using them for general surveillance. For example, Washington, D.C. had 5,000 "traffic" cameras installed under this premise, and then after they were all in place, networked them all together and then granted access to the Metropolitan Police Department, so they could perform "day-to-day monitoring".[35]
The development of centralized networks of CCTV cameras watching public areas – linked to computer databases of people's pictures and identity (biometric data), able to track people's movements throughout the city, and identify whom they have been with – has been argued by some to present a risk to civil liberties.[36] Trapwire is an example of such a network.
Social network analysis[edit]
One common form of surveillance is to create maps of social networks based on data fromsocial networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter as well as from traffic analysisinformation from phone call records such as those in the NSA call database,[37] and others. These social network "maps" are then data mined to extract useful information such as personal interests, friendships & affiliations, wants, beliefs, thoughts, and activities.[38][39][40][41]
Many U.S. government agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Department of Homeland Security(DHS) are investing heavily in research involving social network analysis.[42][43] The intelligence community believes that the biggest threat to U.S. power comes from decentralized, leaderless, geographically dispersed groups of terrorists, subversives,extremists, and dissidents. These types of threats are most easily countered by finding important nodes in the network, and removing them. To do this requires a detailed map of the network.[40][41][44][45]
Jason Ethier of Northeastern University, in his study of modern social network analysis, said the following of the Scalable Social Network Analysis Program developed by the Information Awareness Office:
The purpose of the SSNA algorithms program is to extend techniques of social network analysis to assist with distinguishing potential terrorist cells from legitimate groups of people.... In order to be successful SSNA will require information on the social interactions of the majority of people around the globe. Since the Defense Department cannot easily distinguish between peaceful citizens and terrorists, it will be necessary for them to gather data on innocent civilians as well as on potential terrorists.
—Jason Ethier[40]
AT&T developed a programming language called "Hancock", which is able to sift through enormous databases of phone call and Internet traffic records, such as the NSA call database, and extract "communities of interest"—groups of people who call each other regularly, or groups that regularly visit certain sites on the Internet. AT&T originally built the system to develop "marketing leads",[46] but the FBI has regularly requested such information from phone companies such as AT&T without a warrant,[46] and after using the data stores all information received in its own databases, regardless of whether or not the information was ever useful in an investigation.[47]
Some people believe that the use of social networking sites is a form of "participatory surveillance", where users of these sites are essentially performing surveillance on themselves, putting detailed personal information on public websites where it can be viewed by corporations and governments.[38] About 20% of employers have reported using social networking sites to collect personal data on prospective or current employees.[48]
Biometric[edit]
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Biometric surveillance is any technology that measures and analyzes human physical and/or behavioral characteristics for authentication, identification, or screening purposes.[49]Examples of physical characteristics include fingerprints, DNA, and facial patterns. Examples of mostly behavioral characteristics include gait (a person's manner of walking) or voice.
Facial recognition is the use of the unique configuration of a person's facial features to accurately identify them, usually from surveillance video. Both the Department of Homeland Security and DARPA are heavily funding research into facial recognition systems.[50] TheInformation Processing Technology Office, ran a program known as Human Identification at a Distance which developed technologies that are capable of identifying a person at up to 500 ft by their facial features.
Another form of behavioral biometrics, based on affective computing, involves computers recognizing a person's emotional state based on an analysis of their facial expressions, how fast they are talking, the tone and pitch of their voice, their posture, and other behavioral traits. This might be used for instance to see if a person is acting "suspicious" (looking around furtively, "tense" or "angry" facial expressions, waving arms, etc.).[51]
A more recent development is DNA fingerprinting, which looks at some of the major markers in the body's DNA to produce a match. The FBI is spending $1 billion to build a new biometric database, which will store DNA, facial recognition data, iris/retina (eye) data, fingerprints, palm prints, and other biometric data of people living in the United States. The computers running the database are contained in an underground facility about the size of two American football fields.[52][53][54]
The Los Angeles Police Department is installing automated facial recognition and license plate recognition devices in its squad cars, and providing handheld face scanners, which officers will use to identify people while on patrol.[55][56][57]
Facial thermographs are in development, which allow machines to identify certain emotions in people such as fear or stress, by measuring the temperature generated by blood flow to different parts of their face.[58] Law enforcement officers believe that this has potential for them to identify when a suspect is nervous, which might indicate that they are hiding something, lying, or worried about something.[58]
Aerial[edit]
Aerial surveillance is the gathering of surveillance, usually visual imagery or video, from an airborne vehicle—such as an unmanned aerial vehicle, helicopter, or spy plane. Militarysurveillance aircraft use a range of sensors (e.g. radar) to monitor the battlefield.
Digital imaging technology, miniaturized computers, and numerous other technological advances over the past decade have contributed to rapid advances in aerial surveillance hardware such as micro-aerial vehicles, forward-looking infrared, and high-resolution imagery capable of identifying objects at extremely long distances. For instance, the MQ-9 Reaper,[59] a U.S. drone plane used for domestic operations by the Department of Homeland Security, carries cameras that are capable of identifying an object the size of a milk carton from altitudes of 60,000 feet, and has forward-looking infrared devices that can detect the heat from a human body at distances of up to 60 kilometers.[60] In an earlier instance of commercial aerial surveillance, the Killington Mountain ski resort hired 'eye in the sky' aerial photography of its competitors' parking lots to judge the success of its marketing initiatives as it developed starting in the 1950s.[61]
The United States Department of Homeland Security is in the process of testing UAVs to patrol the skies over the United States for the purposes of critical infrastructure protection, border patrol, "transit monitoring", and general surveillance of the U.S. population.[62] Miami-Dade police department ran tests with a vertical take-off and landing UAV from Honeywell, which is planned to be used in SWAT operations.[63] Houston's police department has been testing fixed-wing UAVs for use in "traffic control".[63]
The United Kingdom, as well, is working on plans to build up a fleet of surveillance UAVs ranging from micro-aerial vehicles to full-size drones, to be used by police forces throughout the U.K.[64]
In addition to their surveillance capabilities, MAVs are capable of carrying tasers for "crowd control", or weapons for killing enemy combatants.[65]
Programs such as the Heterogenous Aerial Reconnaissance Team program developed by DARPA have automated much of the aerial surveillance process. They have developed systems consisting of large teams drone planes that pilot themselves, automatically decide who is "suspicious" and how to go about monitoring them, coordinate their activities with other drones nearby, and notify human operators if something suspicious is occurring. This greatly increases the amount of area that can be continuously monitored, while reducing the number of human operators required. Thus a swarm of automated, self-directing drones can automatically patrol a city and track suspicious individuals, reporting their activities back to a centralized monitoring station.[66][67][68]
Data mining and profiling[edit]
Data mining is the application of statistical techniques and programmatic algorithms to discover previously unnoticed relationships within the data.. Data profiling in this context is the process of assembling information about a particular individual or group in order to generate a profile — that is, a picture of their patterns and behavior. Data profiling can be an extremely powerful tool for psychological and social network analysis. A skilled analyst can discover facts about a person that they might not even be consciously aware of themselves.[69]
Economic (such as credit card purchases) and social (such as telephone calls and emails) transactions in modern society create large amounts of stored data and records. In the past, this data was documented in paper records, leaving a "paper trail", or was simply not documented at all. Correlation of paper-based records was a laborious process—it required human intelligence operators to manually dig through documents, which was time-consuming and incomplete, at best.
But today many of these records are electronic, resulting in an "electronic trail". Every use of a bank machine, payment by credit card, use of a phone card, call from home, checked out library book, rented video, or otherwise complete recorded transaction generates an electronic record. Public records—such as birth, court, tax and other records—are increasily being digitized and made available online. In addition, due to laws like CALEA, web traffic and online purchases are also available for profiling. Electronic record-keeping makes data easily collectable, storable, and accessible—so that high-volume, efficient aggregation and analysis is possible at significantly lower costs.
Information relating to many of these individual transactions is often easily available because it is generally not guarded in isolation, since the information, such as the title of a movie a person has rented, might not seem sensitive. However, when many such transactions are aggregated they can be used to assemble a detailed profile revealing the actions, habits, beliefs, locations frequented,social connections, and preferences of the individual. This profile is then used, by programs such as ADVISE [70] and TALON, to determine whether the person is a military, criminal, or political threat.
In addition to its own aggregation and profiling tools, the government is able to access information from third parties — for example, banks, credit companies or employers, etc. — by requesting access informally, by compelling access through the use of subpoenas or other procedures,[71] or by purchasing data from commercial data aggregators or data brokers. The United States has spent $370 million on its 43 planned fusion centers, which are national network of surveillance centers that are located in over 30 states. The centers will collect and analyze vast amounts of data on U.S. citizens. It will get this data by consolidating personal information from sources such as state driver's licensing agencies, hospital records, criminal records, school records, credit bureaus, banks, etc. -- and placing this information in a centralized database that can be accessed from all of the centers, as well as other federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.[72]
Under United States v. Miller (1976), data held by third parties is generally not subject to Fourth Amendment warrant requirements.
Corporate[edit]
Corporate surveillance is the monitoring of a person or group's behavior by a corporation. The data collected is most often used for marketing purposes or sold to other corporations, but is also regularly shared with government agencies. It can be used as a form ofbusiness intelligence, which enables the corporation to better tailor their products and/or services to be desirable by their customers. Or the data can be sold to other corporations, so that they can use it for the aforementioned purpose. Or it can be used for direct marketing purposes, such as the targeted advertisements on Google and Yahoo, where ads are targeted to the user of the search engine by analyzing their search history and emails[73] (if they use free webmail services), which is kept in a database.[74]
For instance, Google, the world's most popular search engine, stores identifying information for each web search. An IP address and the search phrase used are stored in a database for up to 18 months.[75] Google also scans the content of emails of users of its Gmail webmail service, in order to create targeted advertising based on what people are talking about in their personal email correspondences.[76] Google is, by far, the largest Internet advertising agency—millions of sites place Google's advertising banners and links on their websites, in order to earn money from visitors who click on the ads. Each page containing Google advertisements adds, reads, and modifies "cookies" on each visitor's computer.[77] These cookies track the user across all of these sites, and gather information about their web surfing habits, keeping track of which sites they visit, and what they do when they are on these sites. This information, along with the information from their email accounts, and search engine histories, is stored by Google to use for building a profile of the user to deliver better-targeted advertising.[76]
According to the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute that undertake an annual quantitative survey about electronic monitoring and surveillance with approximately 300 U.S. companies, "more than one fourth of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail and nearly one third have fired employees for misusing the Internet".[78] More than 40% of the companies monitor e-mail traffic of their workers, and 66% of corporations monitor Internet connections. In addition, most companies use software to block non-work related websites such as sexual or pornographic sites, game sites, social networking sites, entertainment sites, shopping sites, and sport sites. The American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute also stress that companies "tracking content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard ... store and review computer files ... monitor the blogosphere to see what is being written about the company, and ... monitor social networking sites".[78] Furthermore, about 30% of the companies had also fired employees for non-work related email and Internet usage such as "inappropriate or offensive language" and "viewing, downloading, or uploading inappropriate/offensive content".[78][79]
The United States government often gains access to these databases, either by producing a warrant for it, or by simply asking. TheDepartment of Homeland Security has openly stated that it uses data collected from consumer credit and direct marketing agencies—such as Google—for augmenting the profiles of individuals whom it is monitoring.[74] The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and other intelligence agencies have formed an "information-sharing" partnership with over 34,000 corporations as part of their Infragardprogram.
The U.S. Federal government has gathered information from grocery store "discount card" programs, which track customers' shopping patterns and store them in databases, in order to look for "terrorists" by analyzing shoppers' buying patterns.[80]
Human operatives[edit]
Organizations that have enemies who wish to gather information about the groups' members or activities face the issue of infiltration.[81][82]
In addition to operatives' infiltrating an organization, the surveilling party may exert pressure on certain members of the target organization to act as informants (i.e., to disclose the information they hold on the organization and its members).[83][84]
Fielding operatives is very expensive, and for governments with wide-reaching electronic surveillance tools at their disposal the information recovered from operatives can often be obtained from less problematic forms of surveillance such as those mentioned above. Nevertheless, human infiltrators are still common today. For instance, in 2007 documents surfaced showing that the FBI was planning to field a total of 15,000 undercover agents and informants in response to an anti-terrorism directive sent out by George W. Bush in 2004 that ordered intelligence and law enforcement agencies to increase their HUMINT capabilities.[85]
Satellite imagery[edit]
On May 25, 2007 the U.S. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell authorized the National Applications Office (NAO) of theDepartment of Homeland Security to allow local, state, and domestic Federal agencies to access imagery from military intelligencesatellites and aircraft sensors which can now be used to observe the activities of U.S. citizens. The satellites and aircraft sensors will be able to penetrate cloud cover, detect chemical traces, and identify objects in buildings and "underground bunkers", and will provide real-time video at much higher resolutions than the still-images produced by programs such as Google Earth.[86][87][88][89][90][91]
Identification and credentials[edit]
One of the simplest forms of identification is the carrying of credentials. Some nations have anidentity card system to aid identification, whilst many, such as Britain, are considering it but face public opposition. Other documents, such as passports, driver's licenses, library cards, banking or credit cards are also used to verify identity.
If the form of the identity card is "machine-readable", usually using an encoded magnetic stripe or identification number (such as a Social Security number), it corroborates the subject's identifying data. In this case it may create an electronic trail when it is checked and scanned, which can be used in profiling, as mentioned above.
RFID and geolocation devices[edit]
RFID tagging[edit]
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tagging is the use of very small electronic devices (called "RFID tags") which are applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves. The tags can be read from several meters away. They are extremely inexpensive, costing a few cents per piece, so they can be inserted into many types of everyday products without significantly increasing the price, and can be used to track and identify these objects for a variety of purposes.
Many companies are already "tagging" their workers, who are monitored while on the job. Workers in U.K. went on general strike in protest of having themselves tagged. They felt that it was dehumanizing to have all of their movements tracked with RFID chips.[92][vague] Some critics have expressed fears that people will soon be tracked and scanned everywhere they go.[93]
Verichip is an RFID device produced by a company called Applied Digital Solutions (ADS). Verichip is slightly larger than a grain of rice, and is injected under the skin. The injection reportedly feels similar to receiving a shot. The chip is encased in glass, and stores a "VeriChip Subscriber Number" which the scanner uses to access their personal information, via the Internet, from Verichip Inc.'s database, the "Global VeriChip Subscriber Registry". Thousands of people have already had them inserted.[93] In Mexico, for example, 160 workers at the Attorney General's office were required to have the chip injected for identity verification and access control purposes.[94][95]
In a 2003 editorial, CNET News.com's chief political correspondent, Declan McCullagh, speculated that, soon, every object that is purchased, and perhaps ID cards, will have RFID devices in them, which would respond with information about people as they walk past scanners (what type of phone they have, what type of shoes they have on, which books they are carrying, what credit cards or membership cards they have, etc.). This information could be used for identification, tracking, ortargeted marketing. As of 2012, this has largely not come to pass.[96]
Global Positioning System[edit]
In the U.S., police have planted hidden GPS tracking devices in people's vehicles to monitor their movements, without a warrant. In early 2009, they were arguing in court that they have the right to do this.[97]
Several cities are running pilot projects to require parolees to wear GPS devices to track their movements when they get out of prison.[98]
Mobile phones[edit]
Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect geolocation data. The geographical location of a mobile phone (and thus the person carrying it) can be determined easily (whether it is being used or not), using a technique known multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towersnear the owner of the phone.[25][26]
Devices[edit]
Surveillance devices, or "bugs", are hidden electronic devices which are used to capture, record, and/or transmit data to a receiving party such as a law enforcement agency.
The U.S. has run numerous domestic intelligence, such as COINTELPRO, which have bugged the homes, offices, and vehicles of thousands of U.S. citizens, usually political activists, subversives, and criminals.[99]
Law enforcement and intelligence services in the U.K. and the United States possess technology to remotely activate the microphones in cell phones, by accessing the phone's diagnostic/maintenance features, in order to listen to conversations that take place nearby the person who holds the phone.[20][21][22]
Postal services[edit]
As more people use faxes and e-mail the significance of surveilling the postal system is decreasing, in favor of Internet and telephone surveillance. But interception of post is still an available option for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, in certain circumstances.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation have performed twelve separate mail-opening campaigns targeted towards U.S. citizens. In one of these programs, more than 215,000 communications were intercepted, opened, and photographed.[100][101]
Controversy[edit]
Support[edit]
Some supporters of surveillance systems believe that these tools protect society fromterrorists and criminals. Other supporters simply believe that there is nothing that can be done about it, and that people must become accustomed to having no privacy. As Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy said: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."[102][103]
Another common argument is: "If you aren't doing something wrong then you don't have anything to fear." Which follows that if you are engaging in unlawful activities, in which case you do not have a legitimate justification for your privacy. However, if you are following the law the surveillance would not affect you.[104]
Opposition[edit]
Some critics state that the claim made by supporters should be modified to read: "As long as we do what we're told, we have nothing to fear.". For instance, a person who is part of a political group which opposes the policies of the national government, might not want the government to know their names and what they have been reading, so that the government cannot easily subvert their organization, arrest, or kill them. Other critics state that while a person might not have anything to hide right now, the government might later implement policies that they do wish to oppose, and that opposition might then be impossible due to mass surveillance enabling the government to identify and remove political threats. Further, other critics point to the fact that most people do have things to hide. For example, if a person is looking for a new job, they might not want their current employer to know this.
In addition, a significant risk of private data collection stems from the fact that this risk is too much unknown to be readily assessed today. Storage is cheap enough to have data stored forever, and the models using which it will be analyzed in a decade from now cannot reasonably be foreseen.[105]
Totalitarianism[edit]
Programs such as the Total Information Awareness program, and laws such as the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act have led many groups to fear that society is moving towards a state of mass surveillance with severely limited personal, social, political freedoms, where dissenting individuals or groups will be strategically removed in COINTELPRO-like purges.[3][4][106]
Kate Martin, of the Center For National Security Studies said of the use of military spy satellites being used to monitor the activities of U.S. citizens: "They are laying the bricks one at a time for a police state."[90]
Some point to the blurring of lines between public and private places, and the privatization of places traditionally seen as public (such as shopping malls and industrial parks) as illustrating the increasing legality of collecting personal information.[107] Traveling through many public places such as government offices is hardly optional for most people, yet consumers have little choice but to submit to companies' surveillance practices.[108] Surveillance techniques are not created equal; among the many biometric identification technologies, for instance, face recognition requires the least cooperation. Unlike automatic fingerprint reading, which requires an individual to press a finger against a machine, this technique is subtle and requires little to no consent.[108]
Psychological/social effects[edit]
Some critics, such as Michel Foucault, believe that in addition to its obvious function of identifying and capturing individuals who are committing undesirable acts, surveillance also functions to create in everyone a feeling of always being watched, so that they become self-policing. This allows the State to control the populace without having to resort to physical force, which is expensive and otherwise problematic.[109]
Privacy[edit]
Numerous civil rights groups and privacy groups oppose surveillance as a violation of people's right to privacy. Such groups include: Electronic Privacy Information Center, Electronic Frontier Foundation,American Civil Liberties Union
There have been several lawsuits such as Hepting v. AT&T and EPIC v. Department of Justice by groups or individuals, opposing certain surveillance activities.
Legislative proceedings such as those that took place during the Church Committee, which investigated domestic intelligence programs such as COINTELPRO, have also weighed the pros and cons of surveillance.
Counter-surveillance, inverse surveillance, sousveillance[edit]
Countersurveillance is the practice of avoiding surveillance or making surveillance difficult. Developments in the late twentieth century have caused counter surveillance to dramatically grow in both scope and complexity, such as the Internet, increasing prevalence of electronic security systems, high-altitude (and possibly armed) UAVs, and large corporate and government computer databases.
Inverse surveillance is the practice of the reversal of surveillance on other individuals or groups (e.g., citizens photographing police, although this is more of a political reference, as some groups specifically aim to harass police and retaliate for their own criminal pasts, as well as ongoing criminal activity, such as was the case with regard to Rodney King's continual illegal activities. This was confirmed upon his death when authorities recorded ongoing illegal drug and alcohol use. Well-known examples are George Holliday's recording of the Rodney King beating and the organization Copwatch, which attempts to monitor police officers to prevent police brutality or for other nefarious uses as blackmailing. It is well known that certain criminal rights groups seek to use counter-methods in efforts to deter detection of criminal activities, as was the case with Rodney King's historical criminal record, and the intentional set up to use counter-surveillance as a form of entrapment to record police tactics to combat crimes. Counter-surveillance can be also used in applications to prevent corporate spying, or to track other criminals by certain criminal entities. It can also be used to deter stalking methods used by various entities and organizations.
Sousveillance is inverse surveillance, involving the recording by private individuals, rather than government or corporate entities.[110]
In popular culture[edit]
In literature[edit]
- George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, portrays a fictional totalitarian surveillance society with a very simple (by today's standards) mass surveillance system consisting of human operatives, informants, and two-way "telescreens" in people's homes. Because of the impact of this book, mass-surveillance technologies are commonly called "Orwellian" when they are considered problematic.
- The novel - mistrust highlights the negative effects from the overuse of surveillance at Reflection House. The central character Kerryninstalls secret cameras to monitor her housemates - see also Paranoia
- The book The Handmaid's Tale, as well as a film based on it, portray a totalitarian Christian theocracy where all citizens are kept under constant surveillance.
- In the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander uses computers to dig out information on people, as well as other common surveillance methods, as a freelancer.
In music[edit]
- The Dead Kennedys' song, "I Am The Owl", is about government surveillance and social engineering of political groups.
Onscreen[edit]
- The movie, Gattaca, portrays a society that uses biometric surveillance to distinguish between people who are genetically engineered "superior" humans and genetically natural "inferior" humans.
- In the movie Minority Report, the police and government intelligence agencies use micro aerial vehicles in SWAT operations and for surveillance purposes.
- HBO's crime-drama series, The Sopranos, regularly portrays the FBI's surveillance of the DiMeo Crime Family. Audio devices they use include "bugs" placed in strategic locations (e.g., in "I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano" and "Mr. Ruggerio's Neighborhood") and hidden microphones worn by operatives (e.g., in "Rat Pack") and informants (e.g., in "Funhouse", "Proshai, Livushka" and "Members Only"). Visual devices include hidden still cameras (e.g., in "Pax Soprana") and video cameras (e.g., in "Long Term Parking").
- The movie, THX-1138, portrays a society wherein people are drugged with sedatives and antidepressants, and have surveillance cameras watching them everywhere they go.
See also[edit]
- Big Brother Watch, a British civil liberties and privacy pressure group
- Hepting v. AT&T, a 2006 lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which alleges that AT&T assisted the National Security Agency (NSA) in unlawfully monitoring communications
- Jewel v. NSA, a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) against the National Security Agency (NSA) and several high-ranking U.S. government officials charging an "illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet communications surveillance"
- Informational self-determination, a term for the capacity of the individual to determine in principle the disclosure and use of his/her personal data
- List of government surveillance projects
- Mass surveillance
- Panopticon, a type of institutional building designed to allow a watchman to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without their being able to tell whether they are being watched
- Privacy law
- Signals intelligence, intelligence-gathering by interception of communications and electronic signals
- Sousveillance (inverse surveillance), the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity
- Surveillance art, the use of surveillance technology to offer commentary on surveillance or surveillance technology
- Surveillance system monitor, a job that consists of monitoring closed circuit surveillance systems in order to detect crimes or disturbances
- Trapwire, a U.S. counter-terrorism technology company that produces software designed to find patterns indicative of terrorist attacks
By the United States government[edit]
 National Security Agencysurveillance |
|---|
 Map of global NSA data collection |
- 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, reports about NSA and its international partners' mass surveillance of foreign nationals and U.S. citizens
- Bullrun (code name), a highly classified U.S. National Security Agency program to preserve its ability to eavesdrop on encrypted communications by influencing and weakening encryption standards, by obtaining master encryption keys, and by gaining access to data before or after it is encrypted either by agreement, by force of law, or by computer network exploitation (hacking)
- Carnivore, a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation system to monitor email and electronic communications
- COINTELPRO, a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the FBI aimed at U.S. domestic political organizations
- Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act
- Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier (CIPAV), a data gathering tool used by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
- Dropmire, a secret surveillance program by the NSA aimed at surveillance of foreign embassies and diplomatic staff, including those of NATO allies
- Heterogeneous Aerial Reconnaissance Team (HART), a DARPA project to develop systems for aerial surveillance of large urbanized areas using unmanned aerial vehicles
- Magic Lantern, keystroke logging software developed by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
- Mail Isolation Control and Tracking and Mail cover, programs to log metadata about all postal mail sent and received in the U.S.
- NSA call database, a database containing metadata for hundreds of billions of telephone calls made in the U.S.
- NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–07)
- NSA whistleblowers: William Binney, Thomas Andrews Drake, Mark Klein, Thomas Tamm, Russ Tice
- Spying on United Nations leaders by United States diplomats
- Stellar Wind, code name for information collected under the President's Surveillance Program
- Terrorist Surveillance Program, an NSA electronic surveillance program
- Total Information Awareness, a project of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
References[edit]
- ^ OED
- ^ Lyon, David. 2007. Surveillance Studies: An Overview. Cambridge: Polity Press.
- ^ a b c "Is the U.S. Turning Into a Surveillance Society?".American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
- ^ a b "Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society". American Civil Liberties Union. January 15, 2003. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
- ^ Diffie, Whitfield; Susan Landau (August 2008). "Internet Eavesdropping: A Brave New World of Wiretapping". Scientific American. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
- ^ a b "CALEA Archive -- Electronic Frontier Foundation".Electronic Frontier Foundation (website). Retrieved March 14, 2009.
- ^ a b "CALEA: The Perils of Wiretapping the Internet".Electronic Frontier Foundation (website). Retrieved March 14, 2009.
- ^ a b "CALEA: Frequently Asked Questions". Electronic Frontier Foundation (website). Retrieved March 14, 2009.
- ^ Hill, Michael (October 11, 2004). "Government funds chat room surveillance research". USA Today. Associated Press. Retrieved March 19, 2009.
- ^ McCullagh, Declan (January 30, 2007). "FBI turns to broad new wiretap method". ZDNet News. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
- ^ "FBI's Secret Spyware Tracks Down Teen Who Made Bomb Threats". Wired Magazine. July 18, 2007.
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- ^ Arena, Kelly; Carol Cratty (February 4, 2008). "FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping". CNN. Retrieved March 14, 2009.
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- ^ "LAPD: We Know That Mug". Wired Magazine. Associated Press. December 26, 2004. Retrieved March 18, 2009.
- ^ Mack, Kelly. "LAPD Uses Face Recognition Technology To Fight Crime". NBC4 TV (transcript from Officer.com). Retrieved December 20, 2009.
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- ^ Gasparre, Richard (January 25, 2008). "The U.S. and Unmanned Flight: Part 1". airforce-technology.com. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
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- ^ Edwards, Bruce, "Killington co-founder Sargent dead at 83", Rutland Herald, November 9, 2012. Retrieved December 10, 2012.
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- ^ Birch, Dave (July 14, 2005). "The age of sousveillance". The Guardian (London). Retrieved August 6, 2007.
Further reading[edit]
- Garfinkel, Simson, Database Nation; The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century. O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. ISBN 0-596-00105-3
- Gilliom, John Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy, University Of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-29361-5
- Jenkins, Peter Advanced Surveillance Training Manual, Intel Publishing, UK ISBN 0-9535378-1-1
- Jensen, Derrick and Draffan, George (2004) Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control Chelsea Green Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1-931498-52-4
- Lyon, David (2001). Surveillance Society: Monitoring in Everyday Life. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 978-0-335-20546-2
- Lyon, David (2007) Surveillance Studies: An Overview. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 978-0-7456-3591-0
- Fuchs, Christian, Kees Boersma, Anders Albrechtslund, and Marisol Sandoval, eds. (2012). "Internet and Surveillance: The Challenges of Web 2.0 and Social Media". New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-89160-8
- Parenti, Christian The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America From Slavery to the War on Terror, Basic Books, ISBN 978-0-465-05485-5
- Harris, Shane. (2011). The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State. London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 0-14-311890-0
- Matteralt, Armand. (2010). The Globalization of Surveillance. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. ISBN 0-7456-4511-9
- Feldman, Jay. (2011). Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-375-42534-9
- Hier, Sean P., & Greenberg, Joshua (Eds.). (2009). Surveillance: Power, Problems, and Politics. Vancouver, CA: UBC Press. ISBN 0-7748-1611-2
- Lyon, David (Ed.). (2006). Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond. Cullompton, UK: Willan Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84392-191-2
- Laidler, Keith. (2008). Surveillance Unlimited: How We've Become the Most Watched People on Earth. Cambridge, AU: Icon Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-84046-877-9
- Staples, William G. (2000). Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Post-Modern Life. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 0-7425-0077-2
- Allmer, Thomas (2012). "Towards a Critical Theory of Surveillance in Informational Capitalism". Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3-631-63220-8
External links[edit]
General information[edit]
- ACLU, "The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society"
- Balkin, Jack M. (2008). "The Constitution in the National Surveillance State", Yale Law School
- Bibo, Didier and Delmas-Marty, "The State and Surveillance: Fear and Control"
- EFF Privacy Resources
- EPIC Privacy Resources
- ICO. (September 2006). "A Report on the Surveillance Society for the Information Commissioner by the Surveillance Studies Network".
- Privacy Information Center
- "The NSA Files (Dozens of articles about the U.S. National Security Agency and its spying and surveillance programs)". The Guardian. 2013.
Historical information[edit]
- COINTELPRO—FBI counterintelligence programs designed to neutralize political dissidents
Legal resources[edit]
| ||
| ||
Unique Identification Authority of India
 |
|
| Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Aadhaar scheme logo | |
| Agency overview | |
| Formed | January-2009 |
| Jurisdiction | Government of India |
| Headquarters | New Delhi |
| Annual budget |  30 billion (US$460 million) (2010) |
| Agency executives | Nandan Nilekani, Chairman Vijay S Madan, Director General and Mission Director |
| Website | |
| uidai.gov.in | |
 |
| This article is part of the series: Politics and government of India |
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), is an Authority of theGovernment of India. The UIDAI was established in January-2009 under the Planning Commission of India. Its mandate is to issue Unique Identity to:
1. Residents of India (called Aadhaar)
2. Corporate entities like Companies, NGOs, Trusts, Political Parties etc.(Corporate-UID).[1]
Till now UIDAI has made progress on Aadhaar only. Work on Corporate-UID is yet to start, however it has been provisioned with its 12-digit Number System.[1] Corporate-UID is intended to bring transparency on donations, financial transactions; and to prevent Wholesale-Corruption of money-laundering, benami transactions (i.e. under fictitious name), allocation of natural resources like Land, Spectrum, Mining of Sand, Iron-ore, Coal-blocks etc.
UIDAI owns and operates the main database server called Central Identity Data Repository (CIDR).[2]
The Authority is headed by Chairman of cabinet rank. The UIDAI is part of thePlanning Commission of India.[2][3] Nandan Nilekani, former co-chairman of Infosys Technologies, was appointed as the first Chairman of the authority in June 2009.[4]Vijay S Madan, an IAS Officer, joined as the Director General and Mission Director of the Unique Identification Authority of India on 1 April 2013 . He replaced Ram Sewak Sharma, who has moved to Jharkhand as the chief secretary of the state.[5]
Contents
[hide]- 1 Features of Aadhaar
- 2 Who is afraid of Aadhaar and Why?
- 3 Obstacles of Aadhaar
- 4 Name and logo
- 5 Projected Cost and Benefits
- 6 Enrollment & Generation Status
- 7 Report of the Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance
- 8 Legal challenges
- 9 Launch
- 10 Coverage, goals and logistics
- 11 Direct Benefit Transfer
- 12 People's Reaction
- 13 News Updates
- 14 See also
- 15 External links
- 16 References
Features of Aadhaar[edit]
Aadhaar is a 12-digit Personal Identification Number (PIN) issued to residents of India for life-time. Aadhaar is not mandatory to obtain; similarly as Driving License, Bank Account or Passport is not mandatory to obtain. However, Aadhaar is mandatory to get subsidy on LPG or to receive other services in compliance with the interim order dated 23-Sep-2013 of the Supreme Court. It is a unique Number and about 100 billion Aadhaar Numbers can be issued. The Aadhaar Number mapped with the demographics and bio-metric data of the Aadhaar-holder is stored in CIDR database. The data is – photograph, ten finger-print, iris date of birth, address, gender etc. In case of death of Aadhaar-holder, its status is marked accordingly in the CIDR database; thus Aadhaar is never reused.[7]
Aadhaar is NOT a Card. It is just a NUMBER, written on paper letter to tell us. It serves the purpose if Aadhaar-holder can memorize it. It has been clarified by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.[8] Identity of Aadhaar-holder can be verified online thru E-KYC process within 10 seconds. E-KYC authentication is consent-based and paperless; provides electronic copy of the Aadhaar letter. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has made Aadhaar letter and E-KYC as a standard Proof of Identity (PoI) and Proof of Address (PoA) to open a Bank account.[9] Aadhaar letter is also accepted by Passport Seva, SEBI, Deptt. of Revenue, IRDA, PFRDA, Deptt. of Telecom etc.[10][11]
Out of 1.25 billion (125 crore) population of India, about 750 million (75 crore) do not have proper Identity document. Only 50 million people have Passport, 150 million have Driving License and 30 million pay Taxes. Lack of Identity deprives the poor land-less people from availing even the basic services. Now Aadhaar is supposed to serve this basic purpose of providing Identity.[12]
One of the main objectives of Aadhaar is to use it as an effective governance tool - to bring transparency, efficiency and weed out the bogus beneficiaries from public welfare programs e.g. public welfare pensions, scholarships, public health, NREGA, subsidy on PDS Ration, Kerosene, LPG etc. Thus Aadhaar is expected to save public exchequer from bogus beneficiaries upto Rs. 1.1 Trillion (Rs. 110,000 crore) by the year 2020 as per Study Report of National Institute of Public Finance & Planning.[13][14][15][16][17] [18] [19]
In 1980s pointing towards the wide-spread corruption in public welfare services in India, the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had made a famous statement in Parliament that only 15% of benefits reach the poor people, rest 85% are eaten-away by the corrupt middlemen.[20] Similarly, the World Bank Chief said that Aadhaar will help eradicate poverty in India.[21]
India is moving rapidly towards e-governance. The stand-alone databases of public services do not have ability to detect and prevent fictitious & ineligible beneficiaries. Hence Aadhaar Number will work as pivot of e-governance and will inter-link all the public service databases. It is capable of eliminating Retail-corruption in public domain which has been plaguing Social Welfare Programs badly. Hence there is protest in various forms from the vested interests to subvert Aadhaar program. The vested interests tried to create phobia unsuccessfully, which is irrelevant in a country like India where about 750 million people starve everyday for at least one meal.[22]Similar protests happened 3 decades ago against computerization of Banking and Rail Ticket-booking; and now people enjoy the Anywhere Anytime Rail Ticket-booking and Bank ATMs.
Aadhaar is not capable of preventing wholesale-corruption like allocation of Coal-blocks, 2G Spectrum, Mining of Iron-ore, Sand, Onion Hoarding etc. Corporate-UID is required to prevent such wholesale-corruptions and this provision is already inbuilt in UIDAI Number System, yet implementation is pending.[23][24]
Who is afraid of Aadhaar and Why?[edit]
As the public databases are getting inter-linked one by one thru Aadhaar Number in various States (particularly Delhi State), we see the following effects: [18][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]
- Middlemen are finding difficult to continue with corruption in public welfare pensions, scholarships, public health, NREGA, subsidy on PDS Ration, Kerosene, LPG etc.
- Ineligible, duplicate and fictitious beneficiaries are getting eliminated from public welfare pensions, scholarships, public health, NREGA, subsidy on PDS Ration, Kerosene, LPG etc.
- Corrupts are finding difficult to buy & sell Benami land & building (i.e.under fictitious name).
- Corrupts are finding difficult to open & operate Benami companies for money-laundering.
- Corrupts are finding difficult to open & operate Benami bank accounts for keeping black-money.
- Tax-evaders are finding difficult to evade taxes.
- Impersonation & proxy is getting difficult to commit.
- Criminals & Terrorists are getting detected and tracked thru inter-linked databases of mobile phone, bank account, travel documents etc.
- Illegal Immigrants are getting detected and tracked thru inter-linked databases of mobile phone, bank account, travel documents etc.
- It is getting difficult for Criminals to hide as records are getting accessible to Police from any State of India.
- It is getting difficult to obtain another new Driving License and Arms License from another State once it got impounded.
Obstacles of Aadhaar[edit]
The Supreme Court of India paased an Interim Order on 23-Sep-2013 that no public services such as LPG should be stopped due to lack of Aadhaar. However, the government said it does not stop public services such as LPG at Market Rate (non-subsidized). However, Aadhaar will be mandatory to get the subsidy on LPG. Those who do not want subsidy can continue without Aadhaar. The final decision of Supreme Court is pending on 22-Oct-2013.[32]
The Union Cabint has cleared the UIDAI Bill-2010 on 08-Oct-2013. It is expected to be tabled in Parliament during winter session.[33]
Name and logo[edit]
UID project is also known as Aadhaar meaning support or foundation, and its logo is a yellow sun with a fingerprint embedded in its centre. The logo was designed by Atul Sudhakarrao Pande.[34]
Projected Cost and Benefits[edit]
About Rs. 30 billion (Rs.3,000 crore) has been spent on Aadhaar program as of October 2013 with enrollment of over 500 million (50 crore) persons.[35][36] Government informed the Parliament in August-2013 that the total sanctioned cost of UIDAI (including permanent infrastructure cost) is Rs.123 billion (Rs. 12, 398 crore) for issuing 1.25 billion Aadhaar Numbers. Thus at the end the unit cost will be about Rs.100 per Aadhaar.[37]
The projected Cost & Benefit Analysis Report by National Institute of Public Finance & Policy shows that Aadhaar-enabled public welfare programs will be able to save Rs. 1.1 Trillion (Rs. 110,000 crore) by the year 2020.[17][38]
International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected that Aadhaar-DBT will save 0.5% of GDP from corruption.[39]
Aadhaar-enabled LPG subsidy payment has saved US$ 1 billion on LPG import till August 2013 due to reduction of bogus connections. It is expected to save more than US$ 2 billion once LPG subsidy thru Aadhaar becomes applicable to entire country.[18]Similarly, 2/3rd of subsidized Kerosene has been saved from bogus beneficiaries in one block in Rajasthan.[40]
The official estimate for the project is
Initial estimates project that the initiative will create 100,000 new jobs in the country, and business opportunities worth
Enrollment & Generation Status[edit]
The total number of Aadhaar enrollment as of October-2013 is over 500 Million (50 Crores).[36]
The total number of Aadhaar issued as of 20-October-2013 is over 460 Million (46 Crores). This is more than 38% of the population of India. It is planned to reach 600 Million by mid-2014, when one in every two Indian residents will have an Aadhaar.[35]
Aadhaar enrollment began in September 2010. As of 31 December 2011, there were 36,000 active enrollment stations in thirty two states and union territories.[45] In February 2012, enrolment reached the originally approved target of 200 million. Enrollment commenced in the middle of April 2012 for another 400 million residents being enrolled through the multi-registrar model. NPR continues to enroll in its assigned territory.[46]
Further details are available at the UIDAI portal.[47]
| AADHAARs Issued (state-wise) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
On 27 January 2012 The Cabinet Committee on Unique Identification Authority of India related issues (CC-UIDA1) announced that the NPR and UIDAI enrollments should proceed simultaneously. UIDAI will be allowed to enroll additional 400 million residents beyond 200 million already approved. The remaining 600 million will be enrolled by NPR and Aadhaar number of these will be issued by UIDAI.[48] On 30 January 2012 CC-UIDAI approved budget of phase III of the scheme that covers the cost creation, storage and maintenance of data and services for harnessing the uses of Aadhaar for the entire estimated population till March 2017.[49] Report of the Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance[edit]In December 2011, Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance headed by Yashwant Sinhawhile considering the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010 (that was to give legal backing for the whole exercise), termed the project as directionless and conceptualised with no clarity of purpose.[50] The committee also expressed its reservations on the technology used for the project calling it "untested, unproven, unreliable and unsafe".[51] According to the standing committee report the scheme is riddled with serious lacunae and concerns. "The UID scheme has been conceptualized with no clarity of purpose and leaving many things to be sorted out during the course of its implementation; and is being implemented in a directionless way with a lot of confusion." The report continues "…The scheme which was initially meant for BPL families has been extended for all residents in India and to certain other persons. The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM), constituted for the purpose of collating the two schemes namely, the UID and National Population Register(NPR), and to look into the methodology and specifying target for effective completion of the UID scheme, failed to take concrete decision on important issues…" More importantly the committee has observed that the UID scheme lacks clarity on even the basic purpose of issuing "aadhaar" number. Financial exclusion[edit]Observation 3(f) of the standing committee reads: "The full or near full coverage of marginalized sections for issuing aadhaar numbers could not be achieved mainly owing to two reasons viz. (i) the UIDAI doesn't have the statistical data relating to them; and (ii) estimated failure of biometrics is expected to be as high as 15% due to a large chunk of population being dependent on manual labour." Even the Ministry of Planning in their written reply to the standing committee stated that "failure to enroll is a reality". The introducer system wont be of much use. How many introducers or GOs would be there to introduce millions of slum dwellers, tribal population, or in rural India where they hardly have electricity or internet connectivity? (friendly government school teachers who rang your door bell a year ago may perhaps know some of them) If they can find some introducers, why can't some anti-social elements too can find out some others? The result would be disastrous for our national security for innumerable foreign national (including terrorists) would be enrolled in Aadhaar database with local addresses. Chances are that many more people in rural India where there is no electricity and internet connectivity will be excluded from social welfare schemes even if they acquire aadhaar number. The committee in observation 3(d) notes: "Continuance of various existing forms of identity and the requirement of furnishing, other documents‟ for proof of address, even after issue of aadhaar number, would render the claim made by the Ministry that Aadhaar number is to be used as a general proof of identity and proof of address meaningless". UIDAI clearly says that UID is no substitutes for existing Ids and The Working Paper of the UIDAI which starts with a claim that UID will help the poor access various services ends with a caveat: "UID will only guarantee identity, not rights, benefits and entitlements"[51] Dependency on private players[edit]"The National Informatics Centre (NIC) have pointed out that the issues relating to privacy and security of UID data could be better handled by storing in a Government data centre;" . Even then the UID project is dependent on private players. The committee further notes: "9. The Committee are afraid that the scheme may end up being dependent on private agencies, despite contractual agreement made by the UIDAI with several private vendors. As a result, the beneficiaries may be forced to pay over and above the charges to be prescribed by the UIDAI for availing of benefits and services, which are now available free of cost " . UIADAI has entered into contracts with several government and non-government agencies for enrolment and data collection. The private companies include foreign companies like L1 Identity solutions (now MorphoTrust USA) and Accenture that have even ex-CIA officials on board and as staff. National security[edit]The committee has expressed concern over the implications of the Project Aadhaar on national security. It said: "The Committee are unable to understand the rationale of expanding the scheme to persons who are not citizens, as this entails numerous benefits proposed by the Government" "This will, they apprehend, make even illegal immigrants entitled for an aadhaar number". The committee especially is concerned about the efficacy of introducer system on national security. As opined by many the introducer system could result in many anti-national and anti-social elements acquiring aadhaar numbers on false addresses. Relationship with National Population Registry[edit]UIDAI is using data collected by the Census authorities to prepare the National Population Register(NPR) for creating the UIDs. The NPR is not an exclusive database of Indian Citizens. It contains data on all residents of the country including foreigners. Therefore, issuing UIDs based on the data in the NPR would help illegal migrants get these IDs and would allow them access the government services and programs. Nationality of the individual is one of the variables being recorded during the enumeration of NPR. But the instruction to the Census personnel says:"Nationality of each person has to be asked from the respondent and recorded as declared by him". The officials have been asked to advise people to give correct nationality and that he/she can be penalised for giving false information. Such advise may not work with illegal migrants. The responsibility of proving the identity still lies on the shoulders of residents and not on UIDAI.[52][53] Privacy and civil liberty issues[edit]Some activists have expressed concerns[54] that Aadhaar has potentials for civil liberty and privacy violations,[55] especially when registrars include non-government agencies.[56] Many eminent personalities, including former Supreme Court Justice. V R Krishna Iyer, Historian Romila Thapar, Independent Law Researcher Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Magsaysay Award winner Aruna Roy, and Booker prize winner Arundhathi Roy have questioned the legal validity of the whole exercise. The standing committee on finance observes that: "The clearance of the Ministry of Law & Justice for issuing aadhaar numbers, pending passing the Bill by Parliament, on the ground that powers of the Executive are co-extensive with the legislative power of the Government and that the Government is not debarred from exercising its Executive power in the areas which are not regulated by the legislation does not satisfy the Committee. The Committee are constrained to point out that in the instant case, since the law making is underway with the bill being pending, any executive action is as unethical and violative of Parliament‟s prerogatives." The committee also observed that a National Data Protection Law is "a pre-requisite for any law that deals with large scale collection of information from individuals and its linkages across separate databases. Itwould be difficult to deal with the issues like access and misuse of personal information, surveillance, profiling, linking and matching of data bases and securing confidentiality of information etc." The UIDAI's claim that it has incorporated data protection principles within its policy and implementation framework does not satisfy the committee. In another observation that could raise many questions on the legalities of collections of biometrics even for NPR, the committee notes that "The collection of biometric information and its linkage with personal information of individuals without amendment to the Citizenship Act, 1955 as well as the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003, appears to be beyond the scope of subordinate legislation, which needs to be examined in detail by Parliament".[51] The committee deliberated at length on the civil liberty perspective of the project and considered opinions from eminent personalities in the field of law and civil rights. And speaking on the possibilities of data misuse, it notes that "The Committee are at a loss to understand as to how the UIDAI, without statutory power, could address key issues concerning their basic functioning and initiate proceedings against the defaulters and penalize them." The committee also notes that the scheme leads to ID fraud as prevalent in some countries.[51] Cabinet and Parliamentary approvals[edit]The Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has approved the UIDAI Bill-2010 on 08-October-2013. It may be tabled in the Parliament during winter session.[57] The former chief minister of Kerala, V. S. Achuthanandan had claimed in July 2011 that the program was being launched without "proper debate" in parliament.[58] Other activists had expressed similar concerns.[59] In a letter to the Prime Minister in November 2011, home minister P. Chidambaram had also expressed discomfort about the fact that the project had no cabinet clearance, and hence, may be questioned at a later date.[60] On 17 December 2011 parliamentary standing committee on finance chaired by Yashwant Sinha rejected the proposed bill by saying: "…the Committee categorically convey their unacceptability of the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010…The Committee would, thus, urge the Government to reconsider and review the UID scheme.…" This was the conclusion of Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance (SCoF), which examined the Bill to convert the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) into a statutory authority. With this categorical rebuff, the SCoF dealt a body blow to the Aadhaar project, which is being implemented from September 2010 without Parliament's approval.[61] Economic risks[edit]The projected costs of the Aadhaar project have been quoted between US$6 billion and US$30.42 billion.[citation needed] These costs may not be covered by future revenue produced from the project, which is estimated at US$1.32 billion.[citation needed] The benefits arising from reduction in leakages with modest assumptions are estimated to be 52.85% as mentioned in the cost and benefit analysis done by National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.[62] Parliaments standing Committee on Finance committee discussed at length on the financial implications of the project as evident from page 23-25 of their report. Till date Rs. 31703.2 million have been allotted for the project. More fund clearance is on the anvil. Rs. 88.61 billion has been approved for Phase III of the project. There are no clear figures available on the financial burden the project could incur while some independent estimates pegs the cost as high as Rs. 1,500 billion. As was the case with UK ID project, the cost will escalate for sure. Lets quote from the report of the standing committee on finance : "(a) no committee has been constituted to study the financial implications of the UID scheme; and (b) comparative costs of the aadhaar number and various existing ID documents are also not available. The Committee also note that Detailed Project Report (DPR) of the UID Scheme has been done much later in April, 2011. The Committee thus strongly disapprove of the hasty manner in which the UID scheme has been approved. Unlike many other schemes / projects, no comprehensive feasibility study, which ought to have been done before approving such an expensive scheme, has been done involving all aspects of the UID scheme including cost-benefit analysis, comparative costs of aadhaar number and various forms of existing identity, financial implications and prevention of identity theft, for example, using hologram enabled ration card to eliminate fake and duplicate beneficiaries." Reliability of biometric methods[edit]Using the UIDAI own data - UIDAI Model, Aadhaar is dependent on biometrics being reliable enough to guarantee that there is a one-to-one correspondence between real people and electronic identities on the CIDR (central ID repository). In December 2010, UIDAI self-published a report on their proof of concept trial designed to test, among other things, whether biometrics are reliable enough to guarantee that every entry on the CIDR is unique. UIDAI's figures published show error rate at .01% using finger print and iris only, this low rate combined with photograph match can achieve the desired unique identification. In December 2011, UIDAI conducted a study[63] using the enrolment of 84 million (84 million) residents and obtained statistical results to measure the efficacy of use of biometrics for de-duplication of Indian population. The test was conducted on a production scale (comprising biometric data of 84 million residents in 32 States and Union Territories). The accuracy of actual recorded biometric was found to be several order higher than the accuracy achievable by the critics. The enrolment process includes concept of exception that allows for enrolment of a person without collectible biometric. It is meant for persons with missing fingers or eyes. The enrolment agencies have exploited this feature to enroll fictitious identities. For example, a coriander plant in rural Andhra Pradesh received its unique identification number and of course a card for itself with the photo of a mobile phone. An Aadhaar card with number : 4991 1866 5246 was issued in the name of Mr Kothimeer (Coriander), Son of Mr Palav (Biryani), Mamidikaya Vuru (Village Raw Mango), of Jambuladinne in Anantapur district. As the card displayed the photo of a mobile phone, officials have no clue of the address where the card has to be delivered' [64] or how over 30,000 UIDs were generated by using the fingerprint of a man who was exemployee.[65] This is on top of the earlier snafus of identity proof being handed out without any verification at West Delhi MP Mahabal Mishra's residence.,[66] a wanted terrorist getting an UID under a false name,[67] or even giving a man an UID card with the picture of a woman.[68] UIDAI has promised to fix the loopholes in "ver 2" beginning June 2012. Legal challenges[edit]K S Puttaswamy, a retired judge of Karnataka High Court filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court challenging the legality of UIDAI.[69] The petition, among other things, argued that:
A bench of Chief Justice Altamas Kabir and Justice Jasti Chelameswar agreed to examine the matter and issued notice to the Govt of India on 30 November 2012.[69] On 23 September 2013 the Supreme Court has castigated the AADHAR and said "Aadhar cards not compulsory, don't give them to illegal immigrants". Thew Apex Court also trashed the Centre's claim of Rs 50,000 crore expenses on the UIDAI project and said that Aadhar card is not necessary for important services. A bench of Justices BS Chauhan and SA Bobde said, "The Centre and state governments must not insist on Aadhar cards from citizens before providing them essential services." [72] The Central Government on 23 September 2013 informed the Supreme Court that securing Aadhar cards, being issued by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), was optional and it has not made it mandatory for the citizens.[73] Launch[edit]UIDAI launched AADHAAR program in the tribal village, Tembhli, in Shahada,[74][75] Nandurbar, Maharashtra on 29 September 2010. The program was inaugurated by Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh along with UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.[76] The first resident to receive an AADHAAR was Ranjana Sonawane of Tembhli village.[77] UIDAI Head Quarter Land[edit]The Delhi Development Authority's statutory board of enquiry has accepted a prayer by India Against Corruption (IAC) to scrap change of land use (CLU) for the headquarter of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Sarbajit Roy, the national convenor of IAC, had alleged that the valuable piece of land in New Delhi, worth Rs. 900 crore, was leased to UIDAI at throwaway price using the CLU. At present UIDAI functions from an office in Jeevan Bharti Building in New Delhi's Connaught Circus.[78] The Planning Commission, its nodal agency, is responsible for providing infrastructure. The disputed land is presently owned by 2 financially ailing government telecoms BSNL and MTNL which are locked in a court dispute.[79] UIDAI launches website in five regional languages[edit]The UIDAI launched its multi-lingual website to reach out to various sections of the society. The website, www.uidai.gov.in, will now appear in five regional languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi and Tamil in addition to Hindi and English". The second phase of the launch will include microsites in Assamese, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi and Telugu.[80] Coverage, goals and logistics[edit]It is believed that Unique National IDs will help address the rigged state elections and widespread embezzlement that affects subsidies and poverty alleviation programs such as NREGA.[81]Addressing illegal immigration into India and terrorist threats is another goal of the program.[82] In January 2012, the government of India reiterated the goal of the UID project, "... is primarily aimed at ensuring inclusive growth by providing a form of identity to those who do not have any identity. It seeks to provide UID numbers to the marginalized sections of society and thus would strengthen equity. Apart from providing identity, the UID will enable better delivery of services and effective governance."[48] National Population Registry (NPR) project, a distinctly separate initiative by the Home Ministry, is meant to issue national identity cards to enhance national security.[83] Most reports suggest that the plan is for each Indian resident to have a unique identification number with associated identifying biometric data and photographs by 2011.[44] However, other reports claim that obtaining a unique number would be voluntary, but those that opt to stay out of the system "will find it very inconvenient: they will not have access to facilities that require you to cite your ID number."[84] Government distributed benefits are fragmented by purpose and region in India, which results in widespread bribery, denial of public services and loss of income, especially afflicting poor citizens.[85] As the unique identity database comes into existence, the various identity databases (voter ID, passports, ration cards, licenses, fishing permits, border area id cards) that already exist in India are planned to be linked to it.[84] The Authority is liaising with various national, state and local government entities to begin this process. The Union Labor Ministry has offered its verified Employment Provident Fund (EPFO) database of 42 million citizens as the first database to be integrated into the unique ID system.[86] UIDAI has headquarters in Delhi and a technology centre in Bangalore. It also has 8 regional offices in Chandigarh, Delhi, Lucknow, Ranchi, Guwahati, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore with IAS,IRS officers heading it.[87] Direct Benefit Transfer[edit]Main article: Direct Benefit Transfer Direct Benefit Transfer or DBT is an anti-poverty program launched by the Government of India on 1 January 2013. This program aims to transfer subsidies directly to the people living below the poverty line through the Unique Identification Authority of India. People's Reaction[edit]Although the government has launched Aadhaar and Direct Benefit Transfer scheme with the intention of minimising corruption and bringing transparency in the transaction system, the decision of the government has not been welcomed by a majority of the people of the country.[88]The attribution to this reaction appears to be valid as the functioning of the UIDAI has been questioned at a number of times at different locations of the country. Besides improper functioning the large numbers of complaints people have filed also reveal the lapses of the authority. Reactions of eminent persons to UID[edit]
Reactions of experts to UID[edit]Anupam Saraph, who designed and implemented identity schemes for government and private organisations, has cautioned citizens thus:-[90] Safety[edit]
News Updates[edit]
See also[edit]External links[edit]
References[edit]
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