http://www.flonnet.com/stories/20090814261604900.htm
"The UPA government is going ahead with the ID card project, ignoring criticisms and alternative suggestions. " On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 8:07 PM, V. Sasi Kumar<[email protected]> wrote: > I think the UID thingie has problems that go far beyond questions like > whether M$ is going to get half the pie. > > 1. Implementing this scheme in a country of India's size is, I think, > going to be a quite difficult task. Apart from the question of > technology, there is the big question of collecting the actual data from > 100 crore plus people. So, it is bound to drag on for some time, and no > one is going to be much concerned about the time taken. No other country > of this size has, I think, done that so far (since China, I think, has > not created UID). We can hope that it will die a natural death. > > 2. We can be pretty certain that the final cost is going to be something > like ten times the estimated cost. I can quickly think of at least two > projects in Kerala that have spent an order of magnitude more than they > were supposed to and are yet to show a drop of success for the money > they spent. One of them is ICT related. So this can easily run into > unimaginable figures. And all this to make it possible to give some > handouts to some poor people. mmm, pretty convincing, I should say. > > 3. Such projects in some countries (like the UK and Australia) have been > put on hold due to public pressure. Their apprehensions have been loss > of privacy and possible misuse of the data. These are, as I see, issues > that are equally valid in a developing country. When is the public going > to wake up to this and start opposing the scheme? Are we concerned about > our private data? > > 4. What will happen if some data are stolen from the database and > misused? And what if that data happens to be about an important or > influential or wealthy person? Could this not become a reality > considering the ease with which people can be induced to part with > information in their possession? Or the database broken into, especially > if it is done using Gatesware? I think this could get into many > problems. > > Best > -- > V. Sasi Kumar > Free Software Foundation of India > Please visit http://swatantryam.blogspot.com > > _______________________________________________ > network mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in > _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
