Digital Surveillance and the Threat to Civil Liberties in India

Abstract

In India, privacy was declared a fundamental right a few years ago. Since 2013, however, the government has introduced a panoply of digital-surveillance measures, normalising the shift from targeted surveillance to mass surveillance. Attempts to integrate the public and private information of citizens without strong privacy laws and external oversight indicate India's worrying slide towards a rights-restrictive "surveillance democracy." The emergent surveillance regime involves the state, technological companies, and people themselves, who may collaborate to monitor fellow citizens. While those surveilled are overexposed, the surveillants remain opaque. This increases the chances of rights violations, especially of the traditionally marginalised. The functional scope of surveillance has increased with massive digitalisation. It is now part of governance, doubling up as an early-warning system against security threats and a behaviour-moderating system of social management and control. New means of surveillance include artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled facial-recognition technology and drones that have been mainstreamed into public life without statutory basis or the consent of the surveilled. Digital surveillance is cost-effective for the state, while increasing harm to the public in cases of biased databases and technological errors. COVID-19 has securitised the concept of public-health surveillance by conflating it with public order. This has increased the data burden on private citizens, who can be denied access to public provisions and places if they do not provide their personal information. Without proper safeguards, surveillance can become a tool of exclusion and repression. The European Union can hold India, as well as tech companies, to its own strict privacy standards. Data-driven global interactions and digital dependencies necessitate this. To prevent AI products and dual-use surveillance technologies from being used by states against their own citizens, the EU can define and list high-risk ones, deny wide exemptions to states, and incentivise privacy-focused tech. This could help signal a growing global consensus against mass surveillance.