-The Telegraph The pandemic has given surveillance tools legitimacy in the eyes of civil society which at other times might have been more concerned about privacy issues Among the “seven” to-dos that Prime Minister Narendra Modi listed for the country on April 13 while announcing the extension of a nationwide lockdown was a call for citizens to download the ‘Aarogya Setu’ app. It would help “prevent the spread of [the] corona infection,”...

  A recent report of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) brings forth the dichotomy between digital divide and India’s transition towards a cashless economy. The rural-urban divide in access to computer and internet is quite stark, according to the report entitled 'Key Indicators of Household Social Consumption on Education in India, July 2017 to June 2018'.   The 75th round National Sample Survey (NSS) report on education finds that...

-The Hindu MPs raise questions on privacy, purpose and Srikrishna panel report The Joint Parliamentary Committee on Personal Data Protection Bill will throw open its doors for all stakeholders to express objections and point out loopholes in the proposed legislation, the panel decided at its first meeting held on Thursday. IT Secretary Anshu Prakash gave a presentation giving details of the bill. “Today was just a preliminary briefing, we didn’t go into the bill...

-The New Indian Express The Survey of India plans to use drones to create a high-resolution map of every inch of India. It comes with unprecedented privacy and security challenges The Survey of India (SoI) has embarked upon an ambitious project of using drone imaging to create an ultra-high resolution spatial and topographic map of India. Professor Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, calls it the biggest endeavour in Indian...

-The Indian Express In another significant departure from the draft Bill, the Bill allows personal data to be stored and processed abroad, without requiring a mirror of the data in India. The Personal Data Protection Bill listed to be introduced in Lok Sabha on Wednesday has allowed transfer of certain types of personal data overseas, but has given broad powers to government agencies to collect personal and sensitive data of citizens. An earlier...