Mad, mad cyber world: Is it the end to your privacy?

Has digital space become clogged? Has it become so undependable? How can you be sure that what you have transacted through the net are secured? How can you be sure that while you are walking with your spouse in  the garden, you  are not stalked. You ever know that the pocket sized mobile phone of yours, which you consider so dear and precious in the modern world is the villain of the game. 

The other day I was attending a panel discussion. The panelists were mostly youngsters from  different walks of life. A young lady lawyer, a media head of a leading political party, a chief technology officer of a large IT company and an IT professional doubling as an officer in charge of government relations of a reputed multinational corporation. They dwelt on various aspects of  cyber-crime and  how the private data, are shared, morphed, phished  and sold several times, without you ever knowing about it or doubting whether such things are possible.

Let me start off  with the chief technology officer, who sketched the other side of the digital world. In other words, the app that you have in your smart phone having multiple functions and communication channels, can come to your rescue as a good Samaritan and yet it can backstab you every time that you carry that. 

An internet based company called Facebook or a search engine like Google, which is being used by over 92% of net surfers, are data hungry. With the advent of artificial intelligence, 3D, machine language, growing number of Apps hosted in the mobile phones, which are mostly run on Google platforms etc., that unending appetite to capture data and store them are increasing manifold.  These   platforms can trace wherever you are, even without having  a smart phone. If anyone whom you are talking to is using a smart phone, that  is good enough for the Google to track you and locate where you are, find out what you have done and whom you have talked to and so on and on.

That emboldens me to ask a further question as to how private we are. Everyone turns on GPS while driving not realizing it will automatically keep  details of places you have visited, the mode of transport you have used, where you had stopped and how much time you have spent, how much time you spend with your family etc... Is there anything that you can hide from your search engine or internet  service provider? I do not think so.  Not only that the information is also stored. Of late, Google has allowed such information can be deleted if one wants with certain conditions of how often you can do it. I wonder whether  Google is liable to be penalized if they do not follow the instructions of the person’s privacy  whose movements  are registered with second’s accuracy? Or the larger issue is whether such tracking is an intrusion into ones’ private life. I do not have an answer!

Now about Facebook, another data hungry digital behemoth. It has  the attributes of Google and perhaps something more. Facebook can track you using location data and connected apps.  The Cambridge Analytica incident bore holes on Facebook’s  impeccable image. The security experts fretted over its uncanny knack of spreading misinformation on the social media platforms. Later what followed and still unravelling proved that the initial findings were only a tip of the iceberg. There were reports about its hallowed platforms being used for manipulating elections, collating information without the consent of the user, selling such information, customizing such information for beefing up its advertisement income etc.  
I feel that the incident of Cambridge Analytica was a turning point in the history of  digital world. Since then the common man became aware of the fact that these platforms not only can help you but also be your stalker and steal whatever data you have thought are personal.   The knowledge that Facebook acted as a  data hungry machine triggered many litigations and media glare on the flip side of digitization. What did they do with the data collected and stored?  They classified and earned money by creating highly customized content for revenue earning through advertisements.  Not only that! It snooped on its users even while they were sleeping. How they cashed on that it may be another mystery to be unraveled.
It may be interesting to discern how they have been snooping on you through your location data.  They capture and store your location, your location history and the friends nearby. Even if you turn off your mobile, even then Facebook can use other significant information such as IP address and Wi-Fi to track one. It can also spy on you with the connected apps by using customized software kits. Facebook also can trap you using the mouse and it can monitor whether you have liked one site or disliked it by the tone of your push on the mouse. Then the question arises what is left in an individual as private data or information.
Does it mean, such stored data by the search engines and internet service providers are bad in nature?  There are some positive spin offs  that one cannot discount. There are many complex cases that are being proved using the data stored by these companies.
Is there any need for an arbiter for regulating the cyber operations and to draw a line what should be done and what should not be done? There is definite move towards this direction. The European Union has already set up such a regulatory system with stringent penalty clauses. It has clamped a heavy penalty on Facebook for circumventing the privacy laws. Besides, each state in the US has its own cyber rules, which have to work in harmony with the central legislation.
What is the scope of cyber protection in India? Recently the Indian cabinet has given nod to a cyber legislation, which will be soon introduced in the Parliament,  is  in line with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The government last year introduced a draft personal data protection bill to regulate the use of an individual’s data by the government and private companies.  As of today, the nation does not have a law on the use of personal data and preventing its misuse.  The Supreme Court upheld the right to privacy as a fundamental right back in 2017.

The bill seeks to divide three categories of data  viz. critical, sensitive and general. It also lays down a legal framework to preserve the sanctity of consent in data sharing and penalize those who breach that.  The bill also stipulates how the data should be stored and processed, where and in what format. Of course, the provisions are largely aimed at  checking irresponsible trolling, which can breach privacy policies and mostly covers data relating to financial, health, sexual orientation, biometrics, transgender status, religious or political beliefs and affiliation—can be stored only in India. However, data can be processed outside India with explicit consent. The term critical data will be defined by the government from time to time and has to be stored and processed in India. Any data that is non-critical and non-sensitive will be categorized as general data with no restriction on where it is stored or processed.

If one critically goes through various provisions of the proposed bill, a number of questions arise. The foremost is the stringent provisions of the bill and that is sharing information and that can be done only by consent, if it belongs to the categories of sensitive and general. In other words, a critical data can be accessed by a sovereign authority without the consent of the people, whose privacy is breached. Nobody can raise any question on that.  Does it mean that the sovereign has the absolute authority to hack or access all information, which is otherwise privy to an individual, group or an organization?  Can it be misused to settle scores with political opponents or settle personal vendetta? The other point is when such provisions can be used and what are the checks and balances so that the provisions are not misused. I am not entering into debate on sensitive and general data since there are many issues that are raised from time to time, particularly relating to storage of data or processing the same.  One of the major reasons why India walked out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a grouping of  South Eastern nations   after being a part of it for long years,  is known to all. India insisted that data relating payment systems should be stored in India, whereas  the other 14 countries in the grouping including China, resisted that move.

Let me conclude by telling that only in a utopian world  your data would be safe wherever you keep it. But in the present world it is  safe nowhere and one has to talk about how much of your data  can be compromised. That takes me to a piece that I had written in this column a few years back about a person who refuses to buy a computer with the fear that his data would be accessed and  compromised. Instead, he kept them reduced to writing in his safe box. Are we moving towards that? In both eventualities, it is going to be a mad mad world, isn’t it?