Why one of us is probably switching to Xfce, and why Graham couldn’t use a proper Linux phone full-time. Plus your feedback about sandboxed apps, Vivaldi in Manjaro, and why we don’t talk about Fedora very often.
This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to discuss the Linux Challenge that the hosts of the WAN Show from Linus Tech Tips are doing. We’ll give our thoughts on this news and offer a helping hand to the WAN Show team. Then we’re going to discuss security concerns as Malware seems to be popping up in WSL. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.
In April 2020 there was the somewhat surprising announcement of Micron announcing their own open-source storage engine designed for SSDs and persistent memory. The Heterogeneous-Memory Storage Engine (HSE) has been redesigned and on Monday debuted in v2.0 form with some fundamental changes.
HSE was started to exploit the performance potential of speedy solid-state drives and persistent memory. The original design of HSE incorporated a Micron-developed Media Pool "MPool" for the Linux kernel to handle object storage. This MPool bypassed conventional file-systems in the name of lower overhead but added further complexity to that storage engine.
Today I found an amazing app that lets me do just that.
Annotator by Trevor Williams is something of a cross between the macOS Preview app (which has powerful markup tools built-in) and FOSS-fave Shutter.
Indeed, until now, my go-to tool for annotating images on Linux is Shutter (or Flameshot, though it can only annotate screenshots you take using it), though its UI is a little dated and a few features are missing.
The glow effect could be used to enhance the quality of the image and it is added in multiple variations such as the neon glow effect, dual lighting effect, gold effect, shining effect, burning effect, dramatic color lighting, led lights, nebula star space, and so on. You can add the glow effect to the entire image, to a part of the image, to an object, to a person, to a scene, to the fonts, to the lines. It is entirely up to you and you can do it with GIMP very easily.
In Linux, the ls command is one of the fundamental tools. It lists files and directories with or without various additional information. The ls command is a part of the GNU core utility package. It should be available on any Linux distro.
This guide will showcase how to use the ls command, specifically “ls -l” in combination with other options.
Before we start to dive into our topic, we need to clarify some terms and to explain some of the differences between the different file systems that OS families use in our day-to-day technology life.
Comment Spam, the plague of the Internet with any website having any input forms, with WordPress most website owners and admins would know well how much spam can be posted daily, especially as your website grows. Currently, there are free and paid plugins, some work but with various degrees of success, then on top you it can add a delay to your site with having to load additional files for captchas which is the most effective form in reducing comment spam to date.
A handy trick for users who run their websites behind Cloudflare reverse proxy for DDoS protection and utilizing their CDN service is to place an automatic javascript challenge on all comments posted, which is far more effective at stopping all comments spam in its track immediately. Another handy benefit, giving that bots don’t visit your site like a traditional user. All spam attempts won’t hit your site but get stopped on Cloudflare servers, giving your servers decreased load if you are severely spammed.
The following tutorial will show you some handy tricks with Cloudflare rules which can work on any plan Free to Enterprise.
NGINX is an open-source, free HTTP server software. In addition to its HTTP server capabilities, NGINX can also function as a proxy server for e-mail (IMAP, POP3, and SMTP) and a reverse proxy and load balancer for HTTP, TCP, and UDP servers. The goal behind NGINX was to create the fastest web server around, and maintaining that excellence is still a central goal of the Nginx project. NGINX consistently beats Apache and other servers in benchmarks measuring web server performance and is now the most popular used web server according to W3Tech.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Nginx on Debian 11 Bullseye using the default Debian repository or the alternative repository by Ondà â¢ej Surý with a free TLS/SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt.
Linux kernel 5.14 is out and is famous for testing out with many new features, support, and security. The Linux 5.14 kernel release has gone through seven release candidates over the last two months and benefits from the contributions of 1,650 different developers. Those that contribute to Linux kernel development include individual contributors and prominent vendors like Intel, AMD, IBM, Oracle, and Samsung.
Git is a mature, actively maintained open source project initially developed in 2005 by Linus Torvalds, the famous Linux operating system kernel creator. Git is designed for developers that need a pretty straightforward version control system. Most software is collaborative efforts and sometimes can have hundreds of people with commits working on software development projects. It’s essential to track these commits customarily done in branches in most projects before being merged into the master for release. It is easy to review and track down any incorrect commits and revert, leading to a much easier development if anything goes wrong.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Git on Rocky Linux 8 in various methods.
Foxit PDF Reader is a free multi-platform PDF reader for Linux, macOS, and Windows. The PDF reader is a small, fast, and feature-rich PDF Reader to view, annotate, form-fill, and sign PDF documents. PDF Reader easily integrates with popular ECMs and cloud storage.
At the end of the tutorial, you will know how to install Foxit PDF Reader on Debian 11 Bullseye.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Slack on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Slack is one of the most popular collaborative communication platforms in the world. The way Slack works is to create channels for your teams, topics, customers, or coworkers. slack too features voice and video calls, file sharing.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of Slack on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).
I haven't put that in the video, because it is a bit long and backstage. But I'm happy to share it on the blog:
Around 2018, the brand Gaomon contacted me by email for a review. But at that time they only had a driver for Windows and Mac, so I rejected their proposal because âËâas you knowâËâ I'm using only a GNU/Linux operating system for my art since more than ten years.
Rejecting brands this way is something I do very often. Not daily, but easily on a monthly basis. I probably got already all existing brands of tablets reaching my mailbox thanks to the good statistic on the channel.
A parenthesis about that: I also met a large amount of hardware sellers totally unrelated to digital art or FLOSS who pretends to like my channel, saw all my videos (be fans?). Then they offer only a Win/Mac product in a email template, or worst: a gadget totally unrelated to digital art. (a lamp for monitor! a sound system, a gamepad? etc...) Poeple working in marketing department should probably stop considering their recipient as idiots. I mean: it's ok to sell products and propose hardware for review. But pretending to saw all videos and be fans only to flatter the ego of creators... Without having a check on the channel and content... This is the type of marketing talk I'm really deeply allergic. Parenthesis closed.
Anyway, in all situation, I try to optimize the new contact with a minimum of FLOSS advocacy. I reply politely with a speech about why they should get a Free/Libre driver, why I'll be happy to review if the hardware works on GNU/Linux and get in the scope of my passion for digital-art or comic. I'll not lie, I often get no replies, or replies that try to convince me to do the review on Win/Mac (lol).
But, In the case of Gaomon, something happened after this first ping-pong of usual proposal on one side and advocacy on my side. In fact, the marketing employee at Gaomon pushed my request to their R&D department (research and development). And so: they started to cooperate with the Digimend project on a Free/Libre Linux driver.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to convert PDF files to image on Linux. Sometimes we need quickly convert a PDF file into images or save a set of images as a PDF file. To do this, we can use a couple of command-line tools such as poppler-utils and ImageMagick.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step convert PDF files to image on Linux.
Compiling software from source code might sound frightening, especially if you have never done it before. If you are a Linux user and want to try compiling something on your own, you have come to the right place.
In this guide, you will learn how to compile and run ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors from source code on Ubuntu using special build tools.
MantisBT is an open source issue tracker platform designed to be flexible and user friendly and provides a tool help you collaborate with different teams to resolve bugs and issues and quickly and professionally as possible.
Mantis also has built-in modules that extend its functionality and the platform is actively being developed. Mantis Bug Tracker allows the team to report errors and organize who can take care of them. Users are able to get started in minutes and start managing their projects while collaborating with their teammates and clients effectively.
This Tutorial will guide you about how to install Mantis BT on Ubuntu 21.
Python is a high-level programming language, widely used for system programming. It is available for all popular operating systems. You can install more than one Python version on a single system. Once you have installed multiple Python versions, you can switch the default Python with the update-alternatives tool.
All the Python developers are recommended to use a virtual environment for the applications. Which provides an isolated environment for the application with a defined Python version.
Docker is a popular container platform to run virtualized lightweight machines. Here we learn how to install Docker Engine and Compose on Alpine Linux using simple commands to run Containers.
Alpine Linux is popular for its lightweight, security, and performance, hence widely used for installing Docker for creating containers using various Images available on Docker Hub. If you are an Alpine user and want to know how to use this container platform on Linux, here are the steps to follow.
Alpine Linux is a Linux distribution optimized for resource efficiency and security. It can be installed in different versions and can therefore run completely from the RAM, for example. In addition to the latest x86 hardware, images are also available for the various Raspberry Pi models. This Linux distribution is based on musl and BusyBox and uses OpenRC for its init system and compiles all user-space binaries as position. Hence, that’s the reason users prefer it for running containers, especially Dockers.
It is an extremely lightweight Linux operating system that aims at minimalism and high security. The standard Alpine ISO size is around 138 MB only, hence quite easy to move, if required. This makes Alpine fits comfortably on a CD-R with enough space. Alpine Linux uses a technique called location-independent executables this prevents attackers to exploit any flaw in the memory because this feature randomly locates programs in memory.
Learn the steps in this tutorial to install Graphical User Interface (GUI) XFCE Desktop on Alpine Linux using command terminal.
Alpine Linux is popular for its lightweight, security, and performance. And that is the reason it comes out of the box with a command-line interface. However, if you want then we can install a graphical user interface on Alpine to use it as a normal Dekstop operating system. And here we learn how to do that by installing the XFCE Linux desktop environment on it.
Nessus is one of those tools every network, system and security admin should have at the ready. Once up and running, you can easily set up scans to check your data center servers to make sure everything is on the up and up. And knowing whether or not your systems suffer from vulnerabilities is one of the more challenging aspects of your job.
Fortunately, Nessus scans are incredibly easy to run. They do take some time to complete, but the process of launching a scan should take you no time.
You do have to have Nessus installed and working. I've covered that process in How to install the Nessus vulnerability scanner on Rocky Linux. So make sure you follow that howto, so you have an instance of Nessus ready to go.
Aliens have come to the Earth but they’re tiny so they’ve brainwashed various bugs to invade your home, so it’s time to step up and build some towers. Note: the developer sent over a key.
This is the first game from developer Full Screen Games that originally released back in February, however they’ve ported it to Linux just recently with it releasing a native build back in late September.
Turn tiles, spread across the board and hopefully capture all of the tiles before your opponent does. Hexteria is a game of tactics and constant thinking plus it’s rather good. Note: copy provided via our Steam Curator.
A very simple concept, all you do is take it in turns to rotate a hexagonal tile with an arrow on it, the direction the arrow points will spread your colour to other linked tiles. All you have to do is take over all the tiles coloured in by your opponent.
It can be surprisingly difficult because even though each match has the board set, the way it plays out can be different each time, it all depends on the first couple rotations which really gives it the unique feel.
Pawnbarian is a dungeon crawling roguelike but not one you've played before. It's turn-based and tile-based but your movement is based on the rules of various Chess pieces you have in cards.
This is the release announcement for IPFire 2.27 - Core Update 160. It comes with a large number of bug fixes and package updates and prepares for removing Python 2 which has reached its end of life.
Before we talk about what is new, I would like to ask you for your support. IPFire is a small team of people and like many of our open source friends, we’ve taken a hit this year and would like to ask you to help us out. Please follow the link below where your donation can help fund our continued development: https://www.ipfire.org/donate.
In this video, we are looking at Xubuntu 21.10 Beta.
Today we are looking at Xubuntu 21.10 Beta. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.13, XFCE 4.16, and uses about 1.3GB of ram when idling. Enjoy!
You are a system administrator on an operations team that works using agile methodologies following a framework based on scrum, kanban, or even scrumban. Your team takes care of a constantly evolving environment. On top of the daily support tickets, there are deliverables to stakeholders that must be completed according to deadlines. The workload is demanding, and the backlog is only getting longer.
This situation creates a high-pressure environment where tasks that deliver immediate value to stakeholders are considered top priority and given the most attention. Tasks that do not provide immediate value are given a lower priority. Unfortunately, it is all too common for developing automation tools and frameworks to fall into the low-priority basket, so your team continues to do things manually. If some of this sounds familiar, you are not alone.
MicroSys Electronics miriac AIP-LX2160A embedded platform combines a 16-core Cortex-A72 NXP LX2160A networking processor with up to five Hailo-8 AI accelerator modules delivering up to 130 TOPS of AI inference performance.
The board supports up to 128 GB RAM, up to 4x SATA hard drives, up to 100GbE connectivity, and appears to be especially suited to applications with multiple IP video streams requiring real-time video analytics.
While the formal announcement has yet to hit the wire, releasing today is Firefox 93.0 as the newest monthly feature update to Mozilla's web browser.
Though there have been some rather light releases this year out of Mozilla's new expedited release schedule, Firefox 93 aligns with being one of the more exciting releases in recent history. After prior failed attempts, Firefox 93.0 finally has AVIF image support enabled for the release.
LinuxLinks, like most modern websites, is dynamic in that content is stored in a database and converted into presentation-ready HTML when readers access the site.
While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.
There are lots of other advantages of running a full, static HTML website.
Here’s some of the main ones...
Note: this is a redacted copy of a blog post published on the internal development blog of a new systems programming language. The name of the project and further details are deliberately being kept in confidence until the initial release. You may be able to find it if you look hard enough — you have my thanks in advance for keeping it to yourself. For more information, see “We are building a new systems programming language”.
I’ve just merged support for reflection in xxxx. Here’s how it works!
Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t. Zig is a new programming language that seems to be growing in popularity. Let’s do a quick dive into what it is, why it’s unique, and what sort of things you would use it for. (Ed Note: Other than “for great justice“, naturally.)
Linked List is another linear data type, e.g., structure data type, widely used in the C language. The main concept in the linked list is storing and binding the locations of data by Pointers. Let see how we will create a Linked list in C language by using Ubuntu 20.04 system. For that, open up the console application from the search area of the Linux desktop. On the other way, you can utilize the shortcut “Ctrl+Alt+T”.
The C language comes up with the semctl system call in the Linux system. This system call has been widely used in the Linux system to carry out the control processes specified by the console shell on some particular semaphore set. The semaphores are known IPs widely used to give access to processes for communication with one another. Semaphore can be a variable having abstract data type for the control access of 1 resource for many procedures. Hence, the semctl system call has been used here to control the semaphore set. Let’s start by signing up from the Linux system.
Open the console application from the search area. A quick alternative way to open the console is via “Ctrl+Alt+T”.
The waitpid() system call monitors a child of the caller process for state changes and retrieves information about the child whose behavior has changed. The child was halted by a signal or resumed by a signal regarded as a state shift. Waiting for a terminated child enables the system to free the resources associated with the child; if no wait is conducted, the terminated child will remain in a “zombie” condition.
The waitpid() system function pauses the current process until the PID argument specifies a child who has changed. The calling process is paused until a child’s process completes or is terminated. Waitpid() halts the calling process till the system receives information about the child’s status. Waitpid() returns quickly if the system already has status information on a suitable child when it is called. If the caller process gets a signal with the action of either executing a signal handler or terminating the process, waitpid() is terminated. The waitpid() function will pause the caller thread’s execution until it receives information and updates for one of its terminated child processes or a signal that will either run a signal-catching procedure or terminate the process.
In general, you should not need to worry about operations somewhere at bit level as a developer. You can conceptualize in terms of bytes, int, and doubles, and even higher-level data. However, there are instances when you would like to zoom in on a single piece. The bits in an integer variable are shifted by a defined number of positions using two shift operators. The “>>” operator changes bits to the right, while the operator changes bits left. In general, employing the left and right shift operators instead of computing and then multiplication by a power of two will result in substantially faster code.
Displaying the output on the screen is an important component of every programming language. The puts function in C is used to perform this. The puts () call in C is a file handling method that is utilized to print a line to the output screen. The puts () function looks a lot like the printf() function. The puts () function is being used to display the string that was read previously using the gets () or scanf() functions on the terminal. The integer value returned by the puts () function represents the number of characters written on the terminal.
If the string contains formatting characters such as ‘% s,’ printf() will provide unpredictable results in the puts() function. Also, if “str” is a user-supplied string, using printf() could compromise security.
On behalf of the Python development community and the Python 3.10 release team, I’m pleased to announce the availability of Python 3.10.0. Python 3.10.0 is the newest major release of the Python programming language, and it contains many new features and optimizations.
Python 3.10 sports powerful pattern matching features, better error reporting, and more. Here’s what’s new.
Python is a powerful multipurpose programming language. This means it’s designed to be used in a range of applications, including data science, software and web development, automation, and generally getting stuff done.
According to the TIOBE index for September 2021, which ranks programming languages based on their popularity, has Python ranked in the number 2 slot. It only needs to bridge 0.16% to displace C from the first place.
Python 3.10 was released yesterday, so let’s take a quick look over all the important changes.
Version 3.10.0 of the Python language has been released. There are a lot of significant changes in this release, including the much-discussed structural pattern-matching feature. See this article for an overview of what's in 3.10.
Python 3.10 is out as the latest major update for this widely-used programming language's official implementation.
Python 3.10 brings support for parameter specification variables, precise line numbers for debugging and other tools, explicit type aliases, structural pattern matching, optional EncodingWarning, writing union types as X | Y, and a variety of other changes. we are also seeing some small performance improvements with Python 3.10 compared to prior versions of Python.
On behalf of the Python development community and the Python 3.10 release team, I’m pleased to announce the availability of Python 3.10.0.
Python 3.10.0 is the newest major release of the Python programming language, and it contains many new features and optimizations.
Python 3.10.0 is the newest major release of the Python programming language, and it contains many new features and optimizations.
This article will cover a guide on using the new “dataclass” objects included in Python 3.7 and newer versions. Dataclasses are just like other Python classes, but they are especially designed to be used as data containers and provide a cleaner and shorter syntax for quickly creating data objects. If you know about “namedtuple” objects and have used them in Python, you can define them as mutable namedtuple type objects. You can create new instances of dataclasses like any other class or namedtuple type objects and access their attributes using dot notation.
This article will cover a guide on using the new “F” type string formatting syntax added to recent versions of Python. Simply termed as “f-strings” or “formatted string literals”, these expressions allow you to use Python variables, functions and statements directly in the text of a string. They also help in keeping the code clean, as you can use inline expressions without resorting to any kind of ordered substitutions that are usually part of the other string formatting techniques available in Python. F-strings are included by default in Python 3.6 and newer builds.
In many cases, bash scripts require argument values to provide input options to the script. You can handle command-line arguments in a bash script in two ways. One is by using argument variables, and another is by using the getopts function. How you can handle command-line arguments is shown in this tutorial.
Postgresql is a rational and reliable database. Many features of PostgreSQL differentiate it from other databases. PostgreSQL schema is a property that allows the user to maintain and organize the objects in the current database and manage them in logical groups. The currently existing schemas are viewed in the psql and pgAdmin as well. To enlist all the schemas in PostgreSQL, there are many approaches. We have used mainly of them to explain in this article. To understand this dilemma, you need to follow some prerequisites steps like:
Install PostgreSQL on your system and configure it. After successful installation and the configuration of Postgresql, confirm it by checking its version on the psql. When you have installed the database, now you can use it because you have privileges to access the features present in it. If you have some knowledge of databases, then it will be favorable for you to understand the schemas. Now open psql and apply the password for the user for the server connectivity.
In PostgreSQL, while performing operations, you need to create relations. After the creation of the tables, you may want to edit the attributes you have provided. One of the examples is to modify the column name of the table. The column name can be changed in PostgreSQL by using the “ALTER” command on the table. First, we provide the table name and then the column name after the rename clause. Thirdly, the name that is to be placed is written.
PostgreSQL supports multiple different data types. One such data type is the floating data type which is used to store the floating-point data. We all understand that the handling and manipulation of this particular data type is a bit tricky and complex, so the programmers find it a little difficult to use it. Therefore, in this guide, we have decided to share the method of using the floating data types in PostgreSQL in Windows 10 after sharing with you a brief introduction of this data type.
As the name indicates, PostgreSQL temporary tables are the tables that are created for some time and are removed manually or automatically. Manually removal deals with deleting the table. Whereas the table is automatically removed when the database session is ended. The temporary tables last till the session exists.
The use of a temporary table helps in avoiding the overloading of data in a particular database. Whenever you think you need to enter data in a database for some time to perform operations on the data, you will go for the temporary table. So that after usage, they are removed. And your database will have sufficient free space. This tutorial will explore what a temporary table is, its working, and its usage.
The ROUND () function converts the number you provided in the decimal or integer form up to the given integer. It can take a single or two arguments depending upon the condition you provide.
The benefits we get from USB are undeniably overwhelming, but the developments in the past few years have led to confusing version numbers. The USB 3.x generation has improved specifications, leading to many variations and different names for each improved version. We have seen variations such as USB 3.1, USB 3.2, USB 3.2 Gen 1Ãâ2, Superspeed, Superspeed+, and the likes. With the arrival of the latest USB4 in 2019, everything else seems much simpler, at least for now. Dubbed as the future USB, USB4 (yes, no space in between) comes with a host of powerful features comparable to Intel’s Thunderbolt 3. At times though, it is still confused with the latest USB connector that’s becoming the standard on most devices nowadays, the USB-C. To completely avoid all the confusion, let’s clear things out by getting into the details of how USB4 relates to USB-C.
Facebook — along with Instagram and WhatsApp — went down globally today. Basically, someone deleted their BGP records, which made their DNS fall apart.
Security updates have been issued by Fedora (cryptopp), Mageia (kernel, kernel-linus, and sqlite), openSUSE (rabbitmq-server), Red Hat (kernel and samba), SUSE (glibc and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (containerd, docker.io, imlib2, ledgersmb, mercurial, mongodb, and node-bl).
Through a new Application Programming Interface (API) for CoWIN, the National Health Authority (NHA) wants to allow government and private entities to instantly know the status of vaccination of an individual. While this may seem to be a good initiative, there are also some major concerns that come along with it. We wrote a joint letter along with the Centre for Health Equity Law & Policy (C-HELP) and the Forum for Medical Ethics Society (FMES) to highlight our concerns.
[...]
A person’s COVID-19 status is their private and confidential health information. Use of this data must be fair, relevant and necessary for a specific purpose. According to the existing privacy policy of CoWIN, personal data collected will only be “used by the Government of India or state governments for the purpose of tracking vaccination progress and status, generating reports, heat maps and other statistical visualisations for the purpose of the management of COVID-19 vaccination in the country, and for generation of vaccination certificates, and to provide you general notifications pertaining to COVID-19 vaccination as may be required”. Hence, the new API is inconsistent with the existing privacy policy since it allows for data to be shared with third parties for purposes other than those which are laid out in the privacy policy.
The privacy policy also states that, “Co-WIN is not in any manner responsible for the security of such information or their privacy practices or content of those Third – Party Sites”. Thus, sharing of vaccination data with third parties becomes alarming since the CoWIN platform is not liable in case of any breach or violation of data privacy which may take place. In the absence of a personal data protection law, allowing for such data to be shared with third parties without any safeguards in place and with no one to be held liable for misuse will only lead to grave injustice and unaccountability.
Even the proposed Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 fails to adequately protect the privacy of health data. For example, it is silent on non-personal and anonymised data. Meanwhile, the Non-Personal Data Governance Framework provides an excessively wide berth for the processing of non-personal data. The Bill also lacks transparency, insofar as the data fiduciary is not required to report instances of breaches of personal data to the data principal (in this case, users whose healthcare data is now public).
In India, you must forfeit your fingerprints, face, and iris in order to receive food, healthcare, education, and social security benefits. This is all thanks to Aadhaar, the world’s largest biometric identity system, and the poster child for “Big ID” programs taking the world by storm.
Similar to Big Tech, ââ¬â¹Ã¢â¬â¹Big ID refers to the market of actors selling and profiting from digital identification systems and infrastructure. These systems often involve biometric data collection and aim to replace or complement government ID systems.
Aadhar was supposed to improve access to public services, but instead created a privacy-harming tool for exclusion: between 1.5 to 2 million Indians lost access to benefits, including over one million children being denied access to school and women unable to access maternity care.
This report turns to India’s Aadhaar Big ID program to bust some of the most common myths around Big ID programs, and underlie their dangers.
Countries around the globe are building huge civil registration systems, modelled after existing Big ID programs, which endanger the human rights of the people they’re supposed to help — India’s controversial Big ID system, Aadhaar, is a shining example.
Similar to Big Tech, Big ID refers to the market of actors selling and profiting from digital identification systems and infrastructure.
Despite all the propaganda in favour of it, Aadhaar has had a disastrous impact on the lives of millions, as outlined in Access Now’s new report, Busting the dangerous myths of Big ID programs: cautionary lessons from India. It unpacks India’s experience over the past 10 years to help policy makers understand what is wrong with centralised, ubiquitous, data-heavy forms of digital identification, asking: why are they required? Read the full report, and the report snapshot.
“Aadhaar was catastrophic for human rights in India,” Ria Singh Sawhney, Asia Pacific Policy Fellow at Access Now. “We had multiple chances to stop, assess, and put human rights first, but we didn’t. And now we must collectively call on the governments around the world to not mirror our broken system.”
A report by a Kashmiri diaspora group has accused social media giants Twitter, Facebook and Instagram of silencing Kashmiri voices in the digital spaces through the frequent suspension of the accounts of artists, academics, and journalists based in and outside the disputed region, a move termed by experts as “reprehensible”.
A 30-page report by the Stand With Kashmir (SWK), titled “How social media corporations enable silence on Kashmir”, claims that since 2017, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms have continually silenced Kashmir-related content.
