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Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]latest-news-updates/national-security-and-privacy-7971.html"/> LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National security and privacy | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

National security and privacy
-The Business Standard
 
Privacy issues are coming into focus as a result of a variety of government initiatives. The Aadhar programme, for issuing unique identity numbers, raises obvious questions of privacy as personal data are compiled in a central database. Then there is the proposed National Grid, designed as a network of 21 available databases across government and private agencies, and meant to help flag potential terrorist threats. On top of these, there is the discussion paper issued by the department of information technology on a national cyber security policy, which says the government wants a law that goes beyond what is there in the amended Information Technology Act.

Each of these initiatives is well-intentioned, and meant to serve an important objective. The Aadhar programme will deliver multiple benefits, ranging from financial inclusion and low-cost money transfers to the targeted delivery of government services. The National Grid is a specific response to the attack on Mumbai in November 2008, and is meant to track patterns in digital data flows to spot potential terrorist activity. And the discussion paper on cyber security seeks to address chinks in the cyber world.

Those involved in these initiatives argue that they do not reach into private space any more than existing databases do. The Aadhar programme, for instance, is said to capture less data than what people already share willingly with a variety of service providers (like phone and credit card companies). Similarly, NatGrid will track not individual actions so much as look for patterns, and drill down only where suspicious trends are spotted. And the cyber security initiative seeks to have legally binding agreements with internet service providers “to support law enforcement, information security incident handling and crisis management”. In the present law there is no provision for any private agreement with intermediaries or network service providers, who can only be engaged with orders issued in specific instances.

All this is fine, when it comes to the initial intention behind each initiative. The question is how it will work in practice, and whether the government has shown sufficient awareness of, and sensitivity to, the legitimate worries that arise with regard to the protection of privacy. The operating assumption in India must be that if someone is given power, it will be misused at some stage. This has become all too clear after the recent revelations on how easily telephones were allowed to be tapped, possibly for collateral purposes – it was income tax that asked for the phones to be tapped, but the taxmen did nothing with the information collected, whereas the information was of greater use in the corporate wars being fought at the time – over gas supply and telecom licences. There has also been little spotlight on the states, where the practice of tapping telephones is even more rampant. So, while centralised or networked databases are an attractive idea, and perhaps inevitable in the contemporary world, it is important to guard against the implicit dangers. Even when they do nothing more than put together what individual databases already have, they place a much greater degree of power in the hands of those controlling the databases. This is good enough reason to worry.

This is not to argue against the need for measures to beef up security, at a time when the country faces the constant threat of terrorist activity. Nor is it an argument against the Aadhar programme, though libertarians in many countries have objected to such identity programmes and democracies have only recently begun adopting them. The concern is that there is no matching concern in government circles for protecting citizens’ privacy, and for putting enough safeguards in place against the misuse of information that is collected.