[Reader-list] Personal Identity Data and Mass Murder in India

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear All

While it cannot denied that personal identity data may have some
utilitarian aspects but one doesn't know how to deal with its alleged
role in orchestrating mass violence. The UID is collecting digital
identities of a billion Indians. These identities are going to be
collect by contractual agencies. The UID does not guarantee the safety
of data related to the personal identities of people instead it holds
the sub contractual agencies responsible for its safety. How do we
know that data will be securely transferred? Who guarantees that this
data will not find its way to RSS and their jehadi counterparts. Could
you please read an excerpt from a report titled,  “We Have No Orders
To Save You”, State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence
in Gujarat and decide for your self whether UID project is a
responsible way to go out alleviating all social ills of India or not?
 While continuing with this UID project, is the government of India
not doing homework for RSS to create more horrible instances of mass
murder, butchering, loot and rape of its population?

Warm regards

Taha

Human Rights Watch interviews with eyewitnesses to the attacks
revealed that that the attackers were carrying voter lists as well as
listings of Muslim businesses, along with cell phones and water
bottles "so as to be fully prepared for a long day's work."69
According to a report in Outlook  magazine, attempts to pinpoint the
exact location of Muslim businesses began months before the attacks:

            In Ahmedabad... one official recalled how for the last few
months, there had been concerted attempts to get lists of Muslim
business establishments from the Ahmedabad municipal corporation....
VHP volunteers have also been making the rounds of professional
institutions and universities, seeking the names and addresses of
Muslim students. Some government sources say VHP members have drawn up
lists of government departments (for example, the Food Corporation of
India) and their allied agencies, and identified "undesirables" and
their addresses.70

Professor Keshavram Kashiram Shastri, ninety-six-year-old chairman of
the Gujarat unit of the VHP denied the charge that the VHP prepared
lists in advance of Muslim shops to loot. To the contrary, he said
"the list of shops owned by Muslims in Ahmedabad was prepared on the
morning of February 28 itself."71

Voter lists were also reportedly used to identify and target Muslim
community members.72 A senior police officer told rediff.com, a
leading Internet news site on India, on conditions of anonymity that,
"[The attackers] hardly failed to lay hands on their targets, thanks
to documents like the voters' list.... The mission was accomplished
with clinical precision."73

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/india/India0402-03.htm#P384_67492