A website built to help citizens air their grievances about repeated messages and calls forcing them to link their Aadhaar numbers with various services has received about 4,000 messages as of Thursday afternoon, a little over one day of it going live.
People can complain to their MPs, banks, telecom operators and other service providers on the website www.speakforme.in.
At least 780 of the messages on the first day were sent to MPs, the activists who set up the website told The Times of India. The website is run by about 90 volunteers.
Bengaluru-based Information Technology professional Kiran Jonnalagadda, who was one of the people involved in setting up the website, said that they want the Parliament to discuss this. “Everyone has been receiving harassing SMSes and calls to link their Aadhaar to mobile phones and bank accounts,” he said. “This is coercion.”
The technology behind Aadhaar is broken, Jonnalagadda added, and pointed out that coercion would make it worse. “It has to be fixed before it is forced on people.”
Aadhaar can be used as a kill switch if everyone connects it to services, founder of digital news website MediaNama, Nikhil Pahwa, said. Pahwa was also among those who set up Speak For Me. “You can be disconnected by the government for no reason,” Pahwa said. “There is also the issue of mass surveillance, when Aadhaar is used along with NATGRID, which is a surveillance system the government is setting up.”
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