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Comment by petertodd | Hacker News Reader

Propaganda? Your 30 minute old account sounds like propaganda too.

We all know we could reduce crime by putting cameras in people's homes. But we don't do that, because there are risks to those kinds of invasive measures.

Aadhar is infrastructure that allows for centralized control of the population. Sometimes that control will be used for good things, like stamping out bribery. But that control can just as easily be used for evil too. And history has shown time and time again that's exactly what happens. I live in Canada, a country filled with refugees of authoritarian regimes. Among my friends I personally know lots of people who have fled those kinds of regimes; I know very few people who have fled countries because of bribery. The latter is annoying and unproductive, but the former is deadly.

That's why you're seeing so much opposition to Aadhar: because it's incredibly dangerous.

edit: better wording

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Police forces can be deadly, too; and the alternative to them usually isn't (it's mostly "just" fraud, armed robbery, rape and slave trafficking.) But we prefer to risk authorizing some people to carry deadly weapons around—even knowing it can and does turn out badly sometimes—in order to reduce the prevalence of the things we get from lawlessness.

Aadhar isn't risk-free, but if the majority of the country want it (i.e. if, being informed of the possible consequences, they aren't rioting or impeaching the guy extending it), I feel like that's their choice to make, just like the choice of having police would be.

Also: One of the things about our modern, globalized world, is that any state that's not a military superpower in its own right can't really get away with bootstrapping toward totalitarian autocracy for very long before some concerned state that is a military superpower steps in with a foreign-aided coup. I'm not asserting that that is always a good thing for the world—but, sort of like the "re-insurance" companies backing financial institutions, this arrangement allows smaller states to do "risky" things like using a panopticon to destroy corruption, with a bit of a safety net.

> Aadhar isn't risk-free, but if the majority of the country want it

Thank you for soberly defending the program. I disagree with one of your precedents (specifically, that Indians are informed about the risks they're taking) but agree with your logic.

FWIW I mostly agree with the logic itself too, and I think it's a much better and more honest argument than failing to treat such surveillance systems as dangerous. My disagreement is on the tradeoffs.

> But we prefer to risk authorizing some people to carry deadly weapons around—even knowing it can and does turn out badly sometimes—in order to reduce the prevalence of the things we get from lawlessness.

Yes, and we can get away with that because deadly weapons have an important safety feature: they're operated by individuals who can think for themselves, and themselves resist tyranny. Those weapons are also operated by individuals who are vulnerable to individuals who also have those weapons - notably an argument against drones is they make war too easy, without enough consequences against the agressor.

When those deadly weapons become more powerful - and more likely to be used against civilians rather than military - society is less and less accepting of their existance. That's why biological and chemical weapons are banned, and nuclear weapons are heavily discouraged.

Imagine if we had the ultimate deadly weapon - the ability to kill any individual with a push of the button with 100% success rates, with the owner of that weapon not being vulnerable to it. We'd be terrified of that weapon, because for all the good it might be able to do, in the wrong hands it'd be game over for freedom.

The opposition to Aadhaar simply recognizes that for whatever good it can do, it is a dangerous weapon, one with surprising power. Part of its surprising power is that it gets used to argue for implementation in other states - fighting that weapon needs to start not by arguing against it in your own country, but by arguing against its deployment anywhere.

> We all know we could reduce crime by putting cameras in people's homes. But we don't do that, because there are risks to those kinds of invasive measures.

Surprisingly, in India if people would be against such a measure then only because it would violate the modesty of women, and not because it invades the privacy.

Refer,

https://thewire.in/24713/aadhaar-identification-simplified-m...

The UIDAI has emphasised several times that information related to religion or caste is neither collected nor stored in the Aadhaar database. Applicants and holders are encouraged to look at their Aadhaar to confirm this

Give me a list of 1000 Indian names and I can guess their religion with nearly 95% accuracy.

All the points you say sound like you're 'prepared' or 'rehearsed' to say things like this.

When the next Gujarat riots happen, trust me just a list of people and their addresses would be sufficient enough to figure out where all the Muslims live.

Propaganda? Your 30 minute old account sounds

Do you know the difference between a reader and writer ?

Please Google the difference.

Not every reader on hn for over 5 years needs to have an account.

And, not every old account need not contribute anything useful to the discussion.

Good Day.

you didn't address his main points though.

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