[schoen]

> Notice a fun fact, Aadhar was introduced before 2013, before the election of 2014. Not many these so called privacy and human rights activists stood up then.

I realize you're probably talking about people in India in this context, not people in the U.S., but I helped write part of this anti-Aadhar post back in 2012:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/09/indias-gargantuan-biom...

In support of your view that some critics have minimal knowledge of India, but also in opposition to your view that critics are motivated by considerations of Indian politics, I don't know which party was in power in India either before or after the 2014 election.

[realonedev]

Aadhar started rolling out in 2011 itself, people started enrolling out then only and started getting Aadhar card by post.

Some privacy activists did stood and enquired but did not get much support or voice.

After 6 years who are the people who are creating noise and running from corner to corner ?

Do these people actually care about privacy? Hard to think.

Have these people lost money due to direct benefit scheme? Plausible.

There is no reason to blatantly hate Aadhar unless

- you are a corrupt government employee

- you are a middleman contractor

- you had invested in something and were hoping that the roI will come as a bribe from the common people

- you fear more direct to benefit schemes in future because you have been accumulating wealth by being a middleman all through your life.

-- you are a privacy freak typing on a device assembled in China.

[schoen]

> you are a privacy freak typing on a device assembled in China.

So I see a lot of tensions in this thread between views of privacy advocates in India opposing Aadhar (accused of having some other kind of agenda) and privacy advocates outside India opposing it (accused of not knowing much about India).

Although this thread has included discussions about both Indian and non-Indian opposition, the privacy community outside India is quite relevant because the original article is a (U.S.-based) Mozilla post criticizing Aadhar.

I'm a privacy advocate outside India accused of not knowing much about India, to which I can readily confess. I have unfortunately not yet had the opportunity to visit India. As I said, I don't know which party was in power when Aadhar was first developed, nor do I know which party is in power now, nor have I witnessed the situation of the rural communities often described as the biggest Aadhar beneficiaries.

I do find it sad that the notion of hypocrisy or disproportionate concern has taken on such a high profile in this thread.

Like you said, I am typing this on a device assembled in China. I've thought about the possibility that the Chinese state (in whose territory this device was shipped), the American state (through those territory this device was shipped and in whose territory its CPU was designed), or the Swedish, Dutch, German, Swiss, Italian, Portuguese, Brazilian, Singaporean, Taiwanese, British, or Chinese states, among others (through those territory I've carried this device), may have used their access to backdoor it somehow.

I find these possibilities deeply tragic. I'm very grateful that so many people around the world are working to expose, detect, and fight back against the ways in which governments may tamper with our devices. People who do that are my heroes, and I hope their community will grow and grow. If a manufacturer can show how it's better-protected its users against supply chain attacks, I will be really excited to consider its products.