That is increasingly becoming next to impossible in the current environment of 'influencers' trying to capture attention by amplifing every possible conspiracy theory.
The thing about science is that you need to be aware of, and accept the scientific method. There is no absolute truth, and future data can contradict established theory.
Unfortunately, this is often used to attack science by claiming that 'scientists change their mind all the time', and hence <insert unwanted result here> should not be relied upon since scientists cannot 'prove' or guarantee that they know the absolute truth. Never mind that the alternate position offered often doesn't have a shred of evidence. As long as it's delivered with absolute confidence, a vast majority of people will accept it.
We really need to do a much better job of teaching the essence of the scientific method in schools.
It's not like they weren't told multiple times to look into it. Lina Khan confirmed it was on their radar. She's one of the most pro consumer chairs we've had. She had 4 years to make a move if she thought a lawsuit was appropriate.
Yes — that’s one plausible explanation, and it still fits the same structural question.
Whether the delay came from optimistic expectations about imminent progress, political or economic incentives, or simple regulatory inertia, the core issue remains the same:
the terminology was tolerated for a long period, and that tolerance allowed ambiguity to accumulate.
My point isn’t about defending Tesla or trusting regulators’ judgment — it’s about asking why the shift happened only after years of implicit acceptance, and what effects that delay had on public understanding and responsibility.
I am not sure I follow your reasoning. You're complaining about a request for donation, on a site which provides a language and supporting infrastructure like a package manager for free?
Why shouldn't the PSF be allowed to ask for donations on their site? I'm sure if you're unhappy with them, they will cheerfully refund you the price you paid?
Oh!, that's right, you paid nothing and you claim that asking for donations is somehow 'enshittification' of PSF.
Frankly, the level of entitlement in your post is something else.
When my dad remarried, my stepmother was a citizen of a different country, does that retroactively make me no longer a "heritage American"? If they had had kids, would my hypothetical half-sibling be a "heritage American"? If the answer is "no", would it change anything if I told you they would have been (like me) descended from a long line of US citizens going back to the 1790s?
Or actually now that I think about it, my mom, who as a child knew her great-grandma, a Norwegian immigrant, wouldn't count as a "heritage American".
> When my dad remarried, my stepmother was a citizen of a different country, does that retroactively make me no longer a "heritage American"? If they had had kids, would my hypothetical half-sibling be a "heritage American"?
No, because of the ties to a foreign country through your stepmother.
> Or actually now that I think about it, my mom, who as a child knew her great-grandma, a Norwegian immigrant, wouldn't count as a "heritage American".
No, although if it's only one great-grandmother among 8 I'm not super worried about your mom being more loyal to Norway than the US. Also realistically Norway today has many of the same issues with culturally-foreign immigrants that the US does, so maybe that wouldn't amount to all that much in the unlikely case that your mom did strongly identify with Norwegian cultural norms.
You just demonstrated first hand the point made by GP. When the supreme court ordered the Govt to cease making Aadhaar mandatory, they just responded by adding so much friction to daily life without Aadhaar that most people, including privacy conscious folks like you just gave in.
The friction already existed long before supreme court orders. No two departments agreed upon what ID they would need for doing the work. It could be rationcard, PAN, passport, driving license etc. Some organizations asked for more than one ID just in case. India just has too many IDs and it is asked for too many use cases.
Aadhar made it easier than before. It is really a quality of life improvement.
The main issue is government requiring IDs even when it is not usually needed in other countries. Mostly in the name of security. This is the root cause. Aadhar is just the symptom.
However Aadhar does enable deeper breaches into privacy due to its unified nature and the way it is validated through government owned infrastructure. There is full tracking possible on all the services that the residents used.
If Aadhar was a self sovereign ID, then having a single ID is definitely a good thing. It keeps privacy intact while usable where needed.
My point wasn't that no id was required before Aadhaar. It's that any id from a range of acceptable ids like passports, ration card, drivers license worked.
Post Aadhaar, even though all of those IDs are still legal and acceptable under law, the govt has added so much friction on the non Aadhaar path that in practice those IDs are unusable.
> It's that any id from a range of acceptable ids like passports, ration card, drivers license worked.
In reality different IDs were accepted at different departments and there was no consensus. It was really a pain. If someone took ration card as valid, others wanted another ID. In some states it was even worse.
It is true that the government has indirectly made Aadhar mandatory, contrary to the spirit of supreme court order.
I may have yielded, but that happened with the acknowledgement that it's not entirely a bad thing. Other IDs have varying levels of validity and authenticity; today I am of the opinion that countries like India shouldn't waste money and time on these. In fact, I'd say ditch the PAN card as well.
If Aadhaar makes it easier for people living near poverty to get say bank accounts, it'd trump the reservations I have. That's what made UPI possible - just about everyone today has UPI, even people begging for money sometimes have a QR code handy (at least here in Bangalore).
> today I am of the opinion that countries like India shouldn't waste money and time on these.
I agree that there are undeniable benefits from Aadhar. However, the issue is that the narrative from the govt has been that it's an either or situation. Either you have the convenience of Aadhaar, or you have privacy. This is unequivocally false. The solution isn't even technical. There are two simple, easily doable fixes which will deliver most of the benefits without significantly eroding privacy.
1. Ensure that legally valid ids other than Aadhaar are not treated as second class by any govt department. If a non Aadhaar id is refused, the reason must be given in writing. The problem is govt babus like the ease of Aadhaar and hence refuse to do the tiny bit of extra work needed on the non Aadhaar path.
2. Amend the Aadhaar act to ban the use of Aadhaar for anything except identity verification. If any personal data linked to Aadhaar is saved by a platform, then they are liable for leak of the data in the event of a breach.
Just doing these will enable the use of Aadhaar for it's original intent which was verifiable identity. The privacy degradation comes from using Aadhaar as a primary key for arbitrary storage of personal data, not from the existence of Aadhaar itself.
These are neither simple, nor easily doable. But the bigger problem is cost (time and money).
My point was that India should switch to a single card/id for everything, and get rid of everything else including the PAN card. Eventually make Aadhaar digital, and chip based so that it can hold your DL as well. It is it bad for privacy, Yes. But what a country should spend on protecting or preserving privacy is a function of where it is on the socioeconomic ladder. If a single ID helps 80% of Indians (a billion people) navigate the labyrinth of our bureaucracy, I'm ok with it, _today_.
Besides, simpler rules go a long way in reducing the power of govt departments (which we can agree on). It reduces cognitive overload for citizens, as well as for govt workers. Factor in where the rest of India stands in terms of education etc, the value of simple rules cannot be overstated.
As someone who values privacy, there are still ways to do it. You just have to invest a lot more energy and time into it though.
What you are proposing is too sweeping, it is not just privacy that suffers. Making a single ID (whose attributes can't be changed) an entire identity of a person is a very risky one. This makes it a single point of failure and in cases like an ID theft, misuse the affected person suffers gravely, and onus will be on them to prove who they are, a Kafkaesque nightmare it would be.
There are several countries which use a single ID for all government interfacing. For that matter, Aadhaar is almost there already. I am not suggesting that private companies should use it, or should be allowed to use it. But a single ID will limit babudom arbitrariness a bit.
> whose attributes can't be changed
Many IDs (outside India) have similar issues, options to change attributes, and various redressal mechanisms.
I don't know of how digital IDs are used etc. in other countries and how ubiquitous there usage is. (One ID I'm aware of is social security numbers (SSN) is U.S, but that is considered as PII data and usually companies take steps to protect/mask them). But citing that this is how it is done elsewhere is just an appeal to tradition/common practice and not necessarily addresses the points I had made.
Hmm, could you previously open a bank account, buy a SIM card, apply for a loan, or enter an airport without any of those cards? If so, I think it's plausible that the government responded by adding friction to daily life in a way that promoted Aadhaar. If not, they didn't.
My point wasn't that no id was required before Aadhaar. It's that any id from a range of acceptable ids like passports, ration card, drivers license worked.
Post Aadhaar, even though all of those IDs are still legal and acceptable under law, the govt has added so much friction on the non Aadhaar path that in practice those IDs are unusable.
India supreme court is bonkers and often known for its BS judgements devoid of logic and law.
Aadhar is "identity", it is not a "card" of any kind though Indians have inherent love for collecting various cards for fun. I have my driving license, PAN, aapar, kisan and state government health insurance cards, labor department id card. I have few more in some drawer.
Once a person gets aadhar, it acts pretty much same as OAuth. You go to a hotel to get a room, Hotel by law is required to verify that your name and face match. You give your aadhar card to them which they scan on their computer and verify that your name matches your face. Because they are a hotel they have right to only verify that.
This is much more privacy preserving than what supreme court did. Because of Supreme Court, hotels no long bother to implement this and instead demand your passport and other identification, scan it and leave it in their system forever. They also are known to sell this data to other from time to time.
The technical idea behind was aadhar was similar to UPI. Government runs the core infra with basic APIs but private companies build apps on top of it. For example, say GPay builds aadhar interface where when you walk into a hotel to reserve a room, Gpay automatically generates a new aadhar number with permissions only to show your name, photo and age. Hotel system verifies that and stores a receipt. If in future government is investigating who stayed in which room, law enforcement can convert these receipts to identification.
This was a better model which would have unlocked a lot of potential. The government failed to argue the case correctly and supreme court acted more like an activist court.
I do think both Government and Supreme Court failed to show the correct user journey here.
I’d love to see a citation for a Hotel being legally allowed access to the Aadhaar KUA system, even before the Supreme Court judgement. No hotel in India does this, because Aadhaar as implemented is a “honor based system” for the majority of usecases where a photocopy of a Aadhaar (with or without QR) is assumed to be valid.
In comparison, a Voter ID and PAN are both hologram protected and forgeries are easily detected.
W3C verifiable credentials do not require a singular identity source, they work perfectly fine with multiple issuers.
Not op,I agree that hotels doesn't do any face matching.
However for getting a new mobile connection the flow is similar to what op has mentioned. It seems one can get a mobile connection by not opting for face recognition, but the process is cumbersome. Similarly for property registrations fingerprints (atleast in some of the states) of the concerned parties is matched against the ones that are associated with their Aadhar.
Yes, because Telcos are designated as AUAs, and expected to do a full KYC under DoT regulations. Hotels are not.
I have two SIMs, and I surprisingly got the newer of them in 20 minutes at a remote village in India without an Aadhaar. Telcos do a Liveness check with their phone instead these days.
> and instead demand your passport and other identification, scan it and leave it in their system forever. They also are known to sell this data to other from time to time.
Isn't this the problem vs the Supreme court judgement? Why does the hotel need to save this data forever?
A simple fix will be to make companies liable for leaks of personal data. That alone will incentivize then to delete personal data as fast as humanly possible.
> A government minister has clarified that the app is not mandatory but "optional" and can be deleted by the user
In India it doesn't really mean anything. As an example the biometric based id 'Aadhaar' is 'voluntary' on paper, The Modi govt had to concede this after a Supreme court judgement that made it clear that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory. However in practice it's anything but. Govt officials will openly refuse to consider other forms of id. They have been informally told by the highest rungs of govt that they will be protected against any complaints and that they need to insist on Aadhaar.
The whole point is to make daily life practically impossible without Aadhaar so that the citizens give in and 'voluntarily' give their biometrics.
> Ensure that the pre-installed Sanchar Saathi application is readily visible and accessible to the end users at the time of first use or device setup and that its functionalities are not disabled or restricted.
Does not sound optional. (I do not have an Aadhaar and have to fight across regulated domains - finance, insurance, banking, investments, even renting).
The thing about science is that you need to be aware of, and accept the scientific method. There is no absolute truth, and future data can contradict established theory.
Unfortunately, this is often used to attack science by claiming that 'scientists change their mind all the time', and hence <insert unwanted result here> should not be relied upon since scientists cannot 'prove' or guarantee that they know the absolute truth. Never mind that the alternate position offered often doesn't have a shred of evidence. As long as it's delivered with absolute confidence, a vast majority of people will accept it.
We really need to do a much better job of teaching the essence of the scientific method in schools.
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