Surveillance is not the only privacy issue, Pg9

Key Highlights:

• In August 2026, the Supreme Court disposed of a Public Interest Litigation on doxxing and deepfakes, directing Union Ministries to implement remedial measures.
• A Rajya Sabha member petitioned the Supreme Court in July 2026 against the Delhi Police's use of facial recognition and biometric surveillance during the Cockroach Janta Party protests.
• The Supreme Court upheld the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in May 2026, despite concerns regarding potential exclusion of eligible voters.
• The article highlights an interconnected pattern of surveillance involving the state, private firms, online networks, and citizens.

Privacy.jpg

Detailed Insights:

• The K.S. Puttaswamy vs. Union of India (2017) judgment established privacy as a constitutionally protected right, but its application primarily focuses on state actions.
• The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, permits the Union government to exempt state instrumentalities from its provisions based on grounds like state security or public order.
• The Pegasus spyware case demonstrated challenges in accountability, as an independent expert committee found malware but could not confirm Pegasus due to government non-cooperation.
• Public identification of protesters, as seen during the Citizenship Amendment Act protests in 2020, was deemed an "unwarranted interference in privacy" by the Allahabad High Court.
• The article argues that the current scale and speed of data collection and dissemination by various actors necessitate a re-evaluation of privacy frameworks.
• It advocates for a new perspective that views surveillance not as isolated acts but as a diffuse phenomenon spread across states, companies, and foreign vendors.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Doxxing: Publishing private or identifying information about an individual on the internet, often with malicious intent.
• Deepfakes: Synthetic media where a person's likeness is replaced with another's using artificial intelligence, typically in images or videos.
• Facial Recognition: A technology that identifies or verifies individuals by analyzing patterns based on their facial features from digital images or video.
• Public Interest Litigation (PIL): A legal action initiated in a court of law for the protection of public interest, rather than private interest.
• Special Intensive Revision (SIR): A process conducted by the Election Commission to update and verify electoral rolls, often involving house-to-house surveys.