“There is no need for an Aadhaar card whatsoever. This is a solution in search of a problem. And it is completely unthought out, very poor system designed if I may say so,” says Maj. Gen. (Retd) S.G. Vombatkere, one of the petitioners who has challenged the Aadhaar Ordinance, now Aadhaar Amendment Act, before the Supreme Court. His is the writ petition that the Supreme Court has sought to include in the Facebook transfer petition case in which Facebook wants four petitions which deal(t) with Aadhaar-social media linkage in three high courts to be transferred to the Supreme Court. In a conversation with MediaNama, Vombatkere explained why general surveillance of the Indian population through traceability is a bad idea, the lack of cybersecurity in India, and why he opposes Aadhaar. 'Traceability is a violation of privacy' On how traceability is a violation of privacy: “WhatsApp and Facebook and Google and all that are trying to get amongst the subscribers of social media so that they can sell your data. Today, data is the new oil. Why should I give my data to WhatsApp or Facebook or anybody? … [A]ll these things, including public surveillance and targeted surveillance, are already excused that they are protecting you from terrorists. So the government is saying that WhatsApp should be able to tell me, if I ask WhatsApp, who is the source of this particular message or this particular picture or whatever, then they should be able to find out and WhatsApp saying we…
