Thread by @digitaldutta

Doing a thread on #NPR

To understand NPR, we need to understand wars & migration. The idea NPR came after the war with kargil in 1999. Where pakistanis entered India in civil clothes and we couldn't identify them. #IndiaAgainstCAA #IndiaAgainstNRC

So after the kargil war, there was conference of all chief ministers on internal security on 17-11-2001. This is where the idea of Multi Purpose National Identity Card was proposed and the idea of National Population Registrar was born to identify citizens from aliens.

Then the office of the registrar general of India framed rules on how this will be done, the idea of bio-metrics to be collected was formulated as early as 2003. So #Aadhaar was not the first time private sector use of id or biometrics was thought of. They wanted 16 parameters

Multi Purpose Identity Card was supposed to be based on SCOSTA standard. Which was brought by NIC for Ministry of road transport to ensure no duplicate licenses are issued with a chip. Biometrics were supposed to be stored in card. This is what civil society wanted for #Aadhaar.

While we designed all of this, nothing progressed. Then we had the d-day, Mumbai 26/11/2008. Terrorists from pakistanis entered India via coast using a fishing boat. This was a new kind of warfare and India suddenly saw coast as threats. What do we do, we improve coastal security

Coastal Police stations where setup, fishing vessels need to be tracked. So we built Registration And Licensing of Fishing Craft (ReALCraft) database. Fisherman need to be identified. So we start implementing the NPR project suddenly. More surveillance databases like NATGRID came

As coastal and border areas where the new threat, NPR was primarily implemented in those areas. During this time, the private sector under @NandanNilekani proposed the #Aadhaar project. Remember the MNIC always was designed to built for private use as well.

Meanwhile the number of data points NPR wanted to collect increased and Nationality was made a clause because #Aadhaar was for all residents including foreigners. All bio metrics were being de-duplicated with UIDAI. NPR became a registrar under UIDAI.

NPR was being carried out by Home department, so essentially states where carrying it out. So states also had access to this data. In certain inner states where it was UIDAI and private sector, states didn't have access to data. So UIDAI created State Resident Data Hubs & KYR+

UIDAI & NPR started collecting more data which they don't need because states wanted it for their welfare activities. Often religion & caste data was collected to understand how these welfare schemes were helping them. States used this data to build 360 degree profiles.

Things changed with people moving to court & challenging random collection of data. SC ordered UIDAI can't share any biometric data. Registrar General of India challenged this, saying it is their right to get it under citizenship act. Post 2016, states also lost access to data.

But during all of this period, this data was used to deleted voters when @ECISVEEP ECI used it to randomly linking voter ids with #Aadhaar. All the data shared by ECI to SRDH leaked from states. People could easily find where muslims & dalits lived. huffingtonpost.in/2018/04/25/aad…

During the hearings in Supreme Court on #Aadhaar, multiple times this issue was raised. The court was told SRDHs are dead. But then in 2019 post hearings we have a huge data leak of 2 states data to political party TDP, who used it for electoral profiling. thewire.in/government/and…

Not only did states use data shared by UIDAI & NPR. They carried out their own surveys. Telangana started it first & did a gigantic survey by asking people to go to their home towns unlike census where your details are recorded where you live. It used this to build a secret db.

While telangana did all of this, AP used an app to combine all the census including livestock,agri & fisheries. All of this data leaked, it was used to profile people. A lot of voters could not vote during Telangana Assembly Elections in 2018.

https://twitter.com/digitaldutta/status/990490193370087424?s=20

Why is the telangana & AP story important like assam? While people were not detained, the state took greater control of their lives with this census/survey based data. Now the economic survey wants to replicate it to combine all databases with Aadhaar. indiabudget.gov.in/economicsurvey…

When Amit shah became home minister, I was so worried with NPR because now they want #Aadhaar back in it. Census 2021 is based on a NPR app. Census data will be used for 2026 delimitation exercise of creating new constituencies. Think what amit shah can do to our elections

Also remember the people who drove this like Nandan Nilekani, RS Sharma, Ajay Bhusan Pandey, UIDAI and Chandra Babu Naidu's blued eyed bureaucrat Ahmed Babu, all benefited with greater postings with no investigations of their actions. What BJP will do with this data I can imagine

There was a time under chidambaram, when he expressed distrust with how insecure the #Aadhaar project was and wanted greater control for NPR because Aadhaar was enrolling people with background checks or certificates and there was fraud everywhere. This led to a confrontation.

Finally this was settled by the cabinet committee on UID at 16.30, 27th Jan 2012 in Panchvati 7, race cource road saying UIDAI will do inner states and NPR continues with coastal & border areas. But if there is a problem with #Aadhaar & NPR data. NPR data will be consider final

It was cabinet committee on UID which unified standards of biometric data between Aadhaar and NPR. Aadhaar is what powered NPR and now powers NRC. Under NRC the supreme court itself ordered UIDAI to collect biometrics to deny benefits to people not in NRC pib.gov.in/newsite/erelco…

What happened under a gist on the cabinet committee on UID meeting on 27th Jan 2012 are roughly in this PIB release. But the file (secret) No. CC-UIDAI/01/2012 has more details. MHA's concerns on Aadhaar are only with them. Even this file doesn't has it
pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintR…

The government already has so much data on you they can classify you a foreigner and make a National Registrar of Citizens. The only thing stopping them is the fundamental right to privacy. This is why the upcoming #dataprotectionbill is so important. Its about our right to life

There is more to this than I can say it here. Someday there shall be a book with facts unlike Mr. Nilekani's so called gospel where he suggests we link everything with #Aadhaar and his gang @Product_Nation builds this like he is a messiah.

@Product_Nation Oh, the whole reason welfare came into all of this is NPR was going slow and fisherman weren't interested in getting MNIC. So you force them to get ids using welfare or you deny them benefits and voila #Aadhaar was born.