Thread by @roadscholarz

Questions to NN following from @virsanghvi interview: NN(@2.30) "I wrote to the Prime minister about privacy in 2010" - would be kinda nice to see what exactly was said. Can he release that correspondence?

NN@2.45: "I went back to being a good guy in the last few months" (we dispute this self-certification)..."people have realized that there are lots of things happening in the world which were far more pernicious".
No, NN. ...2/n

Aadhaar is as bad as China's social crediting system which at least is happening in a country which no many think of as a real democracy.
NN@2.48 still maintains that "In the Aadhaar design, Aadhaar was designed not to collect data". Wow. 3/n

How many government committees that recommended Aadhaar in UPA-2 were presided by NN or his pals like Nachiket Mor and pushed for linking aadhaar to other databases? That's worse than data collection - its data integration across silos. 4/n

NN@4.40 "Because at that time, many Indian didn't have any ID at all" Really? After RTI have revealed that 99.97% of Aadhaar numbers were issued on the basis of existing IDs? @virsanghvi how could you let him get away with that?! thewire.in/law/most-aadha…

He calls it a "federated system" - yeah sure, but its a federated system that is linked by a unique ID. Duh. #AadhaarFail. 6/n

Rahul Matthan makes this point soon after NN says this - you can reconstruct a profile of a person, database by database. That's what the data broking industry is about. That's what Aadhaar is about - its about facilitating data broking and mining. 7/n

NN's response @9.10 "I think that was uh-uh-uh-uh...an issue, in 2011 we had come up with the idea of tokenization"... Virtual IDs ain't good enough. Plus how many Indians are equipped to deal with the practicalities of creating virtual IDs. 8/n

NN goes on to say that 'this has also been handled' referring to the problem of Aadhaar numbers being stored in different databases, b/c he says that its only stored if it is allowed by law and private cos are not allowed by law. He really does think people are duh. 9/n

Dear @virsanghvi @10.40-10.44: We dispute vehemently that Aadhaar has been good for welfare! Our TL is full of stories of death and denial due to Aadhaar. See this for instance: nytimes.com/2018/01/21/opi… 10/n

NN @11.39 "Frankly if you want to do surveillance, just use your mobile phone" - in other words, the logic is: if the mobile phone enables surveillance, its ok for Aadhaar to facilitate it. Duh logic again. 11/n

In any case, the mobile phone can be switched off, the mobile phone does not know as much as the Aadhaar eco-system will (health, employment, travel, recreation, etc.). 12/n

NN around @15.00 kinda congratulates himself for the privacy judgment of 2017. Ugh.

Taking a throwing up break at 15.00. BRB. There's 12 minutes more of this to go through. 13/n

Meanwhile, here's a little glimpse of what aadhaar is doing to delivering benefits to the poor in jharkhand (13 deaths so far, 7 directly attributable to aadhaar): news18.com/news/india/jha… there's part 1 by @droynews18 also which has the #AadhaarKills families

NN @15.38 "My view is that the real use of Aadhaar is beyond all this, the real use of Aadhaar is when it is used for delivering online benefits, ...lots of other things" - yeah? like what? Reminds one of this sentence from The New Yorker profile 16/n

"He is known as a great salesman, but he sells softly, blithely, by making it seem almost an imposition to have to explain the benefits of his product.” Ian Parker, The I.D. Man, in The New Yorker. 17/n

NN @16.44 "People have been obsessed with personally identifiable information (PII)...but what the Cambridge Analytica case has shown is that I don't need any of that, by seeing his likes and dislikes on social media, I can predict his personality" 18/n

Is NN implying that therefore its ok for PII to be leaked? @digitaldutta @sunil_abraham comments pl (see p/t for context) 19/n

NN@ 20.24 "Consent as a means of enforcing privacy is broken, you have to put the onus on the entity collecting the data.." 20/n

NN @21.19 'we have to make sure that aadhaar does not become a basis for exclusion; that is not so much an aadhaar issue, as it is a design of the PDS system' even when confronted with deaths caused by Aadhaar 21/n

NN: in fact the aadhaar law is clear on this;
VS: then why does it happen?
NN: it happens; again, the extent to which it happens we have to see
VS: but one dead child is still a dead child
NN: I don't want to get into an argument with you on this.
#AadhaarFail

NN @23.02 "The core system has been absolutely hack free, what happens at the edge...the aadhaar number was used in a government scheme, the government scheme published the details of that under RTI" Nice, NN! There is no requirement under RTI to publish PII 21/n

@24.05: "We cannot practice anecdotal economics, we have to look at data" says NN, the King of anecdotal policy making 22/n

@virsanghvi has the last word: "good guy in your own mind": that's exactly right. Aadhaar is the biggest con job in recent history. A threat to right to life *and* right to privacy. #AadhaarFail 23/23 (yes, the numbering of tweets is badly messed up)