There is always someone.

The Supreme Court has set up a 9 judge constitutional bench to hear petitions against mandatory biometric identity cards. Previously, smaller benches of the Supreme Court have been giving confusing judgements, sometimes saying that privacy is a fundamental right, while denying it at other times. More recently, the Court opined that Permanent Account Number, or PAN cards, of taxpayers must be linked with Aadhaar number, while ruling that government handouts cannot be linked with Aadhaar. In fact, biometric identity was touted as solution to prevent leakages in government subsidies, which means stealing by local civil servants and politicians. But now, long-suffering taxpayers are to be forced to provide fingerprints and iris scans, like common criminals, while those stealing from the poor are free to carry on. In the case of biometric cards the government has been insisting that citizens of Indian have no right to privacy, while in a case against Facebook the government submitted that personal data is integral to life and dignity. For ordinary people like us, it is ridiculous that the government should be allowed to get away contradicting itself and the lawyer should be fined heavily for wasting the Court's time, but the government is probably arguing in support of its monopoly right to inflict violence against citizens, without actually saying it. There should be no need for such a case. Animals have no concept of privacy, and no one can be human without privacy. To argue that Indians have no right to privacy is to claim that all Indians are animals, which is a crime against humanity. Also, people may provide false personal information on social media but providing false information to the government will lead to arrest. However, citizens are trying to fight back against a ruthless state by not linking their PAN cards with Aadhaar. How are they doing it? Some have avoided linking by submitting their returns before it became mandatory to do so, while others are filing their returns manually, instead of online. Who is responsible for setting up the abomination of biometric identity cards? A man named Nandan Nilekani, who is a billionaire, with a glittering CV. He dismisses all opponents of Aadhaar, contemptuously calling them Khan-market liberals, JNU types, privacy-wallahs and said that "In India half are fake....Fake is the operative word". Yesterday, Nilekani said that there should be a law against "data colonisation", meaning that social media companies should not be allowed to use personal data provided by the users. Clearly, this man is a shameless stooge of the government, despite his immense wealth. What the government wants is to force WhatsApp to open its end-to-end encryption, so that it can spy on citizens. WhatsApp is free and Mark Zuckerburg cannot assault us, whereas we pay huge taxes to the government to lie to us and coerce us. All because some people are willing to sell themselves.