Confusion over privacy policy

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Who decides whether information regarding yourself is shared with others - you or UID Aadhaar officials? Apparently, the latter decides.Recently, a resident of the city had the strange experience of returning from a UID Aadhaar kiosk only to discover that the column ‘Information sharing consent’ in the printout given to him had ‘Yes’ entered by default. In short, he was not given the option of declining to share information regarding himself.  The personnel manning the kiosk had not even bothered to direct his attention to the particular column during his visit. Confused, he returned to the kiosk and asked them to erase the ‘Yes’ and enter a ‘No’ instead, which they did. The justification they gave was also cryptic to say the least. ‘Nobody had objected so far’.    This incident has occurred at a time when serious concerns are being raised about the safety of the data collected under UID Aadhaar since private agencies are also involved in the data collection exercise.   In fact, after the issue was brought to notice on Friday, Keltron, the designated UID Aadhaar data enrolment agency for urban areas, hastily instructed all data collection centres to bring this particular column to the attention of the enrollees before filling in a reply. ‘’I have asked all centres to do it with immediate effect,” Keltron managing director Prasannakumar told this paper on Friday. He said such an issue had not been brought to his attention so far.   In Kerala, the State Government is the UID Registrar and the State IT Mission, the nodal agency. It maybe recalled that the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had observed recently that the National Identification Authority of India Bill lacked provisions for punishing or penalising those who violated the protection of information clause.   CPM Politburo member Brinda Karat, attending a function here on Thursday, had observed: ‘’Aadhaar project is related to the entire citizens of the country. But the government has not yet come forward to discuss the issue in the Parliament”.