
Indian government says citizens don't have absolute right over their bodies - 0xmohit
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/citizens-dont-have-absolute-right-over-their-bodies-government/articleshow/58486260.cms
======
whack
The arguments raised in favor of this motion, sound reasonable and applicable
here in the West as well.

> _" Rohatgi contended that the right over one's body was not absolute as the
> law prohibited people from committing suicide and women were barred from
> terminating their pregnancy at an advanced stage. Had there been absolute
> right then people would have been free to do whatever they wanted to do with
> their body, but the law did not recognise the absolute right of people over
> their bodies, he contended."_

~~~
manquer
Equating suicide to a flimsy ID program, meant to track everything you do is
disingenuous.

There is zero transparency on the security of the system. Even if there was
transparency, I would not trust the people running the system to store my
private biometric data safely. Unlike a password which gets leaked i cannot
change fingerprint or retina at will can I ? Using it authentication is just
stupid . There is no real need for collecting forcibly collecting bio-metric
data,

This is a question of fundamental right to privacy , despite whatever the
court and government may have you believe . Just like the government does not
have the right to capture nude pictures of you , it does not any inherent
right to your biometric information .

~~~
whack
I'm not sure who your comment is addressed towards, because I didn't say
anything about ID programs. If you want to make an argument in favor of
privacy, then make an argument in favor of privacy. But that argument has
nothing to do with "absolute rights over your body".

~~~
manquer
My apologies, it was not in reply to your comment directly, I was talking
about how the media and entire story about this is being framed as something
it is not about at all. Your comment was on top and I did not articulate it
well that the issue should be discussing something else entirely.

As another poster below summed it better than me, the framing is conflating
forced bio-metric collection without any real use , security or benefit with
some very real and needed restrictions on your rights over your body

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hd4
Demonetizing the most widely-circulated banknotes and now 'no consent
required' by the government to get fingerprints. So much for the world's
largest democracy.

~~~
the_common_man
Why bring Demonetization into this? That was an excellent move by the govt.
Sure, the implementation could have been better but there is no change in this
world that has not caused pain to the citizen. Maybe you can enlighten me of
some radical changes which were super smooth and caused no trouble to anyone?

~~~
chdir
> That was an excellent move by the govt

The jury is still out on this one. Any hard proof or statistics that say
otherwise ? Wish there was more transparency.

~~~
manquer
I don't know what macro economic impact it had. Pretty much all the currency
came back through the various loop holes in the rules. The liquidity crunch
continues to create lot of problems to majority of the country who do not have
access to banking and financial services. Nobody really knows the cost of all
this and all for what? I still see unaccounted money floating every day and
nothing seems to have actually changed

------
schoen
The context of this is a biometric national ID program

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar)

This program was originally described as voluntary, but over time it has been
required for many more purposes.

~~~
0xmohit
This _voluntary_ program is now being mandatory to file income tax returns
among other things. The ongoing hearing in the Supreme Court (the argument in
the linked article was made during the hearing) is regarding the voluntary ID
being made mandatory for filing tax returns.

------
throwawayind1
Warning - rant ahead.

Aadhar is expensive, intrusive and ultimately futile for the stated
objectives. More than $1.5B have been spent on it with more being allocated
every budget. For context Mangalyan's budget was $74M. I haven't been able to
find how much it has helped save. There is no cost/benefit analysis.

It was started as a way to ensure proper delivery of subsidised services to
the poor, it has since enhanced its scope to encompass _all_ government
services. One needs it for 1) getting a sim card, 2) filing tax returns 3)
train journey(for seniors but won't be surprised if it soon becomes mandatory
for everyone) 4) school admissions - really kids cannot be enrolled in school
without Aadhar

with proposals to use the biometrics for 5) domestic air travel 6) biometric
enabled POS 7) replace debit/credit cards

Somehow this will magically solve all our problems and make us a developed
nation by virtue of using a biometric enabled digital tracking service.

For a nation of bilion people, even a faboulous error rate of 0.01% will
affect 10M people. People responsible for it claim it is _secure_ and
_hackproof_. I am having a hard time trying to decipher if this is ignorance,
incompetence or malice or all three mixed in.

The current goverment is drunk on power. Obvious comparisons with previous
dictatorial regimes gets laughed at. But the signs are there to see - rampant
sycophancy to the PM, increased social intolerance, conflict escalation
in/with Kashmir/Pakistan, arbitrary decisions like demonetization, moving the
financial year to Jan-Dec.

For a supposedly non-corrupt government, the sly introduction of clause to
remove cap on corporate donations to political parties in the Finance bill is
blatant hypocrisy to say the least.

For anyone who thinks demonetization was good, just review the government
narrative on why it was needed. First it was black money, then terrorist
funding/fake notes, then digitization. The very people who lost their
businesses/livelihood due to demonetization support the PM and think it was
good. When asked why, no idea. Ignorance is strength.

Almost all modern governments are guilty to some extent, but this government
has totally embraced the INGSOC principles and has mastered the art of
doublethink. And the scary thing is, they have succeeded at it. People just
dismiss the privacy and surveillance implications of Aadhar as hypothetical
scenarios.

Anybody who criticizes the government is unpatriotic and a traitor.

------
captn3m0
The basic summary of the situation so far (somewhat simplified) :

\- Aaadhar is brought in as a national identification system, originally for
benefit distribution

\- The Supreme Court in a judgement on October 2015 notes that there is no
legal framework for aadhar and restricts it to only 3 schemes. It notes that
aadhaar cannot be made mandatory for any scheme

\- The current government rushes the aadhaar act as a money bill (the
constitutional validity of which is also being challenged) on 11 mar 2016

\- Several government departments start issuing gazette notifications making
aadhaar mandatory for various schemes (including benefits for AIDS patients,
bhopal gas victims, college entrance examinations, birth certificates among
others).

\- The Finance Bill of 2016 passes several amendments to make linking your
aadhaar mandatory with your PAN card. Historically, a PAN card was the entity
on which you filed your taxes, and with this in place, you cannot file taxes
as your PAN card becomes invalid if you don't link it.

The case being argued today is one that challenges the amendments making
aadhaar mandatory. If you are interested in the court proceedings and the
arguments laid by both sides, here is a long summary (today was day 5 of the
proceedings): [https://indconlawphil.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/the-
constitut...](https://indconlawphil.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/the-
constitutional-challenge-to-s-139aa-of-the-it-act-aadhaarpan-petitioners-
arguments/)

~~~
nileshtrivedi
Original purpose was to flush out illegal immigrants. Benefit distribution
came later.

------
devnonymous
The worrying bit about this statement is not what was said but the fact that
the media is getting fixated on this intentionally ambiguous statement to
conflate the real issue of forced biometric data collection into a black box
central database with no clear and well defined purpose or use, security or
benefit.

------
johnnydoe9
The increasingly anti-privacy moves via the Aadhaar card which now links your
driving license, bank account(s), mobile number and everything you can think
of, banks charging you for withdrawing cash more than 4-5 times a month to
incentivize digital payment, this is making me really scared right now

------
ziikutv
This is nothing new. I think digitizing records of citizen can get hairy but
it also has some pros.

The title of this report taken at face value sounds shocking, but the
arguments raised are perfect here. You do not have the right to suicide or
commit infanticide after a certain stage, nor can you take drugs. The point
raised was, if we had 100% right over our bodies, we would have been allowed
those things. Since we aren't, it is used as a means to explain why Finger
prints and eye scans are irrefutable when getting the Adhaar card.

------
chdir
This account live tweets the proceedings from Supreme Court :
[https://twitter.com/gautambhatia88](https://twitter.com/gautambhatia88)

------
tomjen3
We don't have it in the west either - if we did, there would be no war on
drugs.

~~~
eru
Or ban on euthanasia.

~~~
smt88
Or death sentences, prisons, quarantines, private property... there are lots
of situations where government decides what you can or can't do with your
body.

~~~
eru
I was going with the examples that only concern your body, and not other
things as well.

But of course, by a strict interpretation of "absolute right", any infraction
could count.

------
maverick_iceman
This is a dangerous argument. Peoples' rights over their bodies must be
absolute. Suicide, abortion at any stage, voluntary organ trade, drug use,
prostitution - all these should be legal as they follow from one's right to
her body.

~~~
mighty_atomic_c
Banning suicide is as effective as declaring pi as 3 via legislative fiat. At
least in my mind.

For one, it is hard to enforce; those who choose to end their own lives may
not show any signs until the attempt. If they succeed, they cannot be
punished. If they fail, what is a "just" punishment? How do you effectively
punish someone who wants to die so that after their punishment, they want to
live?

I guess, philosophically, we do have absolute control of our bodies in
practice. Making laws that defy the reality of what humans are is a path to
tyranny. If people dont have absolute rights, does the state? There is talk of
balancing individual rights against the state, which shallowly encouraging,
but to me any system where the individual is not free to not make choices
about their body will always be able to justify actions that trade more rights
for "security".

