Should A Government Spy On Its Citizens?

    • India Times
    • Publish Date: Nov 25 2019 1:57PM
    • |
    • Updated Date: Nov 25 2019 1:58PM
Should A Government Spy On Its Citizens?

The Indian parliament is currently in its winter session, where we'll hopefully hear more about a Personal Data Protection Bill.

A minister in parliament said on Tuesday that the government is "empowered" to intercept any citizen's communications, and even monitor and decrypt any digital communications "generated, transmitted, received, or stored" on a device in the country. All in the interest of national security or foreign relations, of course.

The comment came from Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy, in response to questions regarding whether the government indeed snooped on citizens' WhatsApp and Messenger calls and messages, as well as communications through other VoIP apps. In case you don't remember, that's an incident that came to light last week that the Indian government may have been using Israeli-developed spyware to snoop on all of us. 

So, what was the Indian government doing with this spyware? Was it hunting for domestic terrorists? Investigating mafia leaders? Perhaps cracking down on crime syndicates in the country? Nope.

As it turns out, based on how WhatsApp notified the affected users, around 20 of the Indians being spied on were activists, journalists, politicians, and privacy advocates. It's almost exactly what happens in Saudi Arabia and China, among other places, and with the same Pegasus malware too. And here's Mr Reddy saying that's all kosher in the name of "India's sovereignty". 

Sadly, all of this puts the state of the impending privacy bill in a scary new light. For one thing, it makes sense then why there's been absolutely no talk of the Bill including a provision to protect a citizen's privacy from abuse by law enforcement and the government. But there's more.

This also calls into question one of the first demands of the Indian government, that user data from local and internationally-headed apps be stored in our country. Ideally, you're probably thinking that's a great idea because it ensures your data isn't being transferred against your will out of the country. But on second thoughts, there's quite a big loophole there isn't there?

Mandating that a company like Facebook for instance stores all Indian customer data locally is the face of the demand. But what could end up happening under the surface is that the Indian government also mandates where and how this data is stored. And perhaps it just ends up flowing through government-controlled nodes. That's what's happening in Russia now, ever since they've routed all Internet traffic through the Kremlin. 

Another thing to consider is that there's already a provision in the constitution that guarantees citizens a fundamental right to privacy. That's something the Supreme Court itself stated back in August 2017, when delivering a verdict related to the compulsary Aadhaar card issue. However, later in 2018, the government flew in the face of that once again, when the Home Ministry granted 10 central agencies the right to track, monitor, and intercept data on any computer in the country. In fact, you can even face seven years in prison for stopping someone from one of these authorities harvesting data on your computer.


What's your take? Share your views in the comments section below.


Comments

Vathsan SRI KANCHI MAHASWAMI VIDYA MANDIR

I say this issue has two aspects. The first is that Indian Government can easily track the place where the domestic terrorists are. This is a big plus. In the second aspect, we can''t give our privacy data to the Indian Government even though we are the citizens. In my opinion, I state that this is a bad move.

Ankitha S K NATIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOL

I feel that this is not a good move as the constitution of India itself states that it provides freedom and equality to everyone. Though this system helps in tracking many terrorist groups, on the whole, it is an ''uncomfortable'' move.

Aadeep Aggarw Venkateshwar Global School

Well, it is not right of the goverment to spy over its citizens. But when it comes to security of nation then we have to keep aside privacy of citizens and let pay attention towards security of nation. It may be possible that some people may be threat to the nation and easily hide . At the end for our security we need to cooperate.

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