THREAT OF SURVEILLANCE IN DIGITAL ERA

Justice A. K. Sikri was recently invited to at Lawasia’s first Human Rights Conference in New Delhi on the issue “Freedom of the Press in the Digital Age”. Learned judge spoke on a number of topics like the contempt proceedings in India, media trial that leads to adjudication under stress, surveillance as violative of Human rights and the menace of fake news.
Primary concern of the Justice Sikri was the ever-growing threat of surveillance by the state and non- state that has compromised with the human rights of an individual. Inexpensive access to internet, increased reach of computers and smart phones in every part of the country, encouragement by the government for the digitalization of the country – all of these have increased the data accessibility to a considerable amount. Today it is possible for even small corporations to collect a huge cache of data very easily. For instance, once you search for a health related gadget, you will get to see similar health advertisement all over the computer screen because of access of browsing history to them also known as digital footprints. As it has become cheaper to gather process and distribute the information, the intellectual connection between data and concepts like personhood, privacy, autonomy and respect for private property were neglected in order to experiment.
Though surveillance is not a new concept, technological advancements have created new unimaginable ways of surveillance. The increased access to data, as discussed earlier, has facilitated surveillance by state as well as non- state actors. A simple example of surveillance by a non-state actor is the fact that all the messages communicated through Skype are accessible to Microsoft. For this practice they take the plea of consumer research but it is a serious case of invasion of privacy of an individual. If we talk about the surveillance by the state then it will be interesting to note that many government agencies such as Central Monitoring System, National Intelligence Grid etc. have been established for the purpose of surveillance. They have started functioning also but their powers, functions, situations under which surveillance is permissible and security of data collected by them is still unknown. It was reported in October 2012 that over 10,000 phone calls and 1000 email id’s are under the scanner. In 2012, Indian government got the permission from Blackberry to access personal messages on Blackberry Messenger (BBM). The Hyderabad police force, has built its own criminal tracking system and has started attempts of construction of a database including the profiles of people even without any criminal background.
These are some famous instances of surveillance in India. If we talk about the laws in India which govern surveillance then there is no specific law with regard to surveillance in India. Various acts in parts talk about the surveillance. For example, section 69 of Information Technology Amendment Act 2008 gives power to central and state governments the power to intercept, monitor or decrypt or cause to be intercepted, monitored or decrypted any information generated, transmitted or received or stored in any computer resource if satisfied that it is necessary or expedient so to do, in the interest of sovereignty or integrity of India, defence of India, security of the state, friendly relation with foreign state or public order or for preventing the incitement of any cognizable offence. This section gives wide powers to the state as they can perform surveillance over any message, call or anything without any warrant from any kind of court of law. Information Technology (Procedure and safeguard for Interception, Monitoring and Decryption of information) Rules, 2009 made monitoring, interception or decryption without an order from home secretary or joint secretary, ministry of home affairs, invalid and against the law. Also Information Technology (Procedures and Safeguards for blocking the access of Information by public) Rules, 2009 has been passed by parliament to block public access to any information on any computer resource.
A privacy law is necessary to prevent the indefinite retention of data, unauthorized sharing and disclosure of data and to prohibit the unauthorized access to collected and intercepted data. In a democracy, surveillance should not be general but targeted and it should be authorized by a judicial warrant and due to the absence of privacy legislation individuals are deprived from necessary safeguards.

By-
Anubhav Bijalwan
Student Reporter- INBA