India's top court rules privacy a fundamental right in blow to 'Aadhaar' (National) ID card plan

france24.com ^ | 8/24/17 | Reuters

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

A nine-member bench of India's Supreme Court announced the ruling in a big setback for the Narendra Modi-led government,
which argued that privacy was not a fundamental right protected by the constitution.(Emphasis mine)

The ruling comes against the backdrop of a large multi-party case against the mandatory use of national identity cards, known as Aadhaar,
as an infringement of privacy. There have also been concerns over breaches of data.

Critics say the ID cards link enough data to create a comprehensive profile of a person's spending habits,
their friends and acquaintances, the property they own and a trove of other information.

Aadhaar, which over one billion Indians have already signed up for, was set up to be a secure form of digital identification for citizens, one that they could use for government services.

But as it was rolled out, concerns arose about privacy, data security and recourse for citizens in the face of data leaks and other issues.
Over time, Aadhaar was made mandatory for income tax returns and operating bank accounts.
Companies were also pushing to gain access to Aadhaar details of customers.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

"This is a blow to the government, because the government had argued that people do not have a right to privacy," said Prashant Bhushan,
a senior lawyer involved in the case.

The government has argued the Indian constitution, which came into effect in 1950,
does not guarantee individual privacy as an inalienable fundamental right.

A spokesman for India's law ministry was not reachable for comment."

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

This is the same Indian government that eliminated certain 'high value' denominations of currency in order to force compulsory credit card transactions (paper trail).

"All your information are belong to us" - signed: The BORG
Amazon, Walmart, and Google take notice about privacy.
It should be noted that our government officials , as well as MasterCard , Visa, and other credit card companies want the Untied States to go cashless, .. and use credit cards
since privacy is eliminated and the method creates a 'paper trail'.

[mrsmith]

LOL!
I trust
they didn’t judicially “Constitutionalize” something as nebulous as “right to privacy”.
I would think that British legal influence would give them Common Law ‘privacy’ similar to ours. Later articles should have more depth.

[Boogieman]

“Critics say the ID cards link enough data to create a comprehensive profile of a person’s spending habits,
their friends and acquaintances, the property they own and a trove of other information.”

The nerve! The government should be buying that data from Google and Facebook, not gathering it on its own!

[mewzilla]

India has passports, doesn’t it? Just issue every citizen a passport. Sheesh.

[fruser1]

There is no privacy there.

I remember blackberry was prohibited from selling their wares in that country until they forked over the ability to decrypt the communications.

Everything comms-wise, including phone is already monitored.

Use your phone for anything and they know what you’re doing.

Actually, this is the case pretty much everywhere now.

[Buckeye McFrog]

India now has more Constitutional protections for privacy than we do.

Good for them though.