Indians and privacy

[Desmond]

Necrobumping this thread to update on some serious development in potential violation of privacy by the government - While Delhi has its pollution mask on, the rest of India might need one too. For different reasons of course...

The concoction of CCTVs and Facial Recognition continue to ring alarm bells. We recently even received a response from the NCRB to a legal notice sent to them. But in light of the continuing growing concerns of CCTVs and facial recognition technology in the recent weeks, we throw a few more kicks to fight against this trajectory of mass surveillance.

While the supreme court did uphold our right to privacy, the government is doing everything it can to undermine this ruling.

 

[whitestar_999]

While the supreme court did uphold our right to privacy, the government is doing everything it can to undermine this ruling.

This is inevitable with the advancements in technology. CCTVs will soon become a necessity simply because in today's world(at least developed nations/tier 1 cities in India) almost every reasonably well off person has a camera in their pocket courtesy mobile phone so it is illogical for govt not to install cameras of their own in every place.With the advancements in facial recognition soon it will not be just mobile phones unlocking but also many other things/devices(China already started a facial recognition based payment system eliminating need to carry even cards/phones) & at that time it will again be illogical for govt to not use facial recognition.Only solution to this is electing people who don't misuse it & if one gives an argument that it is impossible then one should probably make plans for immigration because living in a country where one can never expect to have even a little confidence in their elected representatives is simply pointless.

 

[Desmond]

"China is doing it" is not a good example as the Chinese government is a textbook example of an autocratic government. There is ample proof of the extent to which they will go to suppress their citizens. It may seem logical, but it's not ethical. There is no net benefit for the public. Sure, the government feed some propaganda about using it to capturing terrorists, but that is like a 0.1% use case for mass surveillance, other 99.9% of the time, they are just spying on ordinary citizens for no reason.

Only solution to this is electing people who don't misuse it

I think there should be mechanisms in place for accountability. Surveillance must be done only upon a court order or a official warrant. Also a record of whenever it was used must be made available through RTI (which I doubt considering recent developments regarding RTI officers). Such a dangerous system would only be justified with such mechanisms in place otherwise it's free game for the govt. to abuse in anyway they see fit.

if one gives an argument that it is impossible then one should probably make plans for immigration because living in a country where one can never expect to have even a little confidence in their elected representatives is simply pointless.

In worst case, this is the only option. I don't want to live in China 2.0.

 

[whitestar_999]

"China is doing it" is not a good example as the Chinese government is a textbook example of an autocratic government. There is ample proof of the extent to which they will go to suppress their citizens. It may seem logical, but it's not ethical. There is no net benefit for the public.

The point I was trying to make was that the argument of govt not allowed to use facial recognition will hold little water if most citizens are already using facial recognition in their daily lives(as part of their device usage,transactions etc).

Sure, the government feed some propaganda about using it to capturing terrorists, but that is like a 0.1% use case for mass surveillance, other 99.9% of the time, they are just spying on ordinary citizens for no reason.

Again,with technological advancement in future,terrorists too will employ advanced means.Don't forget that 0.1% may be mathematically insignificant but one person able to hack into a nuclear power plant to disable its safety function in a country of millions/billion is enough for any court/sane person to override any law/regulation to stop him so as you said earlier,not a good example.Future terrorists won't be using suicide vests,vehicles or knives,they will probably be using keyboards/3d printers/labs on chips & this is where the all encompassing electronic surveillance will come into play.

 

[Desmond]

The point I was trying to make was that the argument of govt not allowed to use facial recognition will hold little water if most citizens are already using facial recognition in their daily lives(as part of their device usage,transactions etc).

Agreed, but that is mostly because the citizens are not fully educated as to the responsible usage of such technology and the "dark side" of it so to speak. Most people fall under the "nothing to hide" school of thought not knowing that just by having this attitude, they are making it worse for everybody, including themselves.

Again,with technological advancement in future,terrorists too will employ advanced means.Don't forget that 0.1% may be mathematically insignificant but one person able to hack into a nuclear power plant to disable its safety function in a country of millions/billion is enough for any court/sane person to override any law/regulation to stop him so as you said earlier,not a good example.Future terrorists won't be using suicide vests,vehicles or knives,they will probably be using keyboards/3d printers/labs on chips & this is where the all encompassing electronic surveillance will come into play.

Agreed. Not downplaying it's utility, but the main issue is, how do we insure that there will be no misuse? For example, what is stopping the government from monitoring journalists who criticize their policies or question their motives, dig up dirt on them and then use it to discredit them or worse? Such an action could have a chilling effect on free journalism in India and it is already pretty endangered. In other words, is it worth giving the government so much power, especially one that is as corrupt as ours?

 

[whitestar_999]

Agreed, but that is mostly because the citizens are not fully educated as to the responsible usage of such technology and the "dark side" of it so to speak. Most people fall under the "nothing to hide" school of thought not knowing that just by having this attitude, they are making it worse for everybody, including themselves.

Agreed. Not downplaying it's utility, but the main issue is, how do we insure that there will be no misuse? For example, what is stopping the government from monitoring journalists who criticize their policies or question their motives, dig up dirt on them and then use it to discredit them or worse? Such an action could have a chilling effect on free journalism in India and it is already pretty endangered. In other words, is it worth giving the government so much power, especially one that is as corrupt as ours?

Joseph de Maistre - Wikiquote

Every nation gets the government it deserves. OR In a democracy, people get the government they deserve

I completely agree with above,all this talk about govt being "anti-democratic" conveniently forgets that it is the people themselves(directly by voting or indirectly by not voting) who elected the govt. You are saying "is it worth giving govt so much power" but ideally,giving power to govt is no different than giving power to ourselves in a democracy.What I mean to say is that people should not choose such leaders in the first place if they think they can not give them enough power. Just take a simple example,all this talk about misuse of surveillance in the name of curbing terrorism & yet how do you think those terrorists so easily get false identification papers/sims/bank accounts & what not.Just see all these bank frauds being committed on the basis of fraud bank accounts & cases of Jharkand villages/towns where committing bank fraud is now somewhat of a cottage industry.If a govt started adopting western level privacy protection measures in states like Jharkhand,you tell me how anyone is going to stop a terrorist from getting all the documents/sims he want from these areas. People want western world privileges without following the good civic behaviour of western world citizens.

 

[TheSloth]

Now that you mention like this, greed and poverty seems the major reason for people following corrupted practices in our country. It's like a circle feeding itself to grow bigger and stronger. If we want benefits like western countries, we obviously need to start with real education, not just degrees. may be then we will have people with more compassion and less selfishness to commit crimes like corruption.

Also, I too agree with Desmond about having a Audit(like) team who would see the surveillance report every month and check if all the rules and regulations were followed and to publish any wrongdoings to keep things as transparent as possible. But people are being paid to prepare false reports everywhere.

 

[topgear]

Corruption is there to stay as long we have over population problem and some religious agenda for not controlling this primary issue. It's high time now to control population like China.

Also college education is just too cheap if you compare with any developed nation - cheap things not always the best. Govt. would not curb many things as it will have serious social effect on typical "desi" mentality. So we are in a limbo of future development and old shitty mentality of the masses.

So let us welcome the surveillance or whatever measure is going to be introduced - we will adapt and overcome

 

[Desmond]

I completely agree with above,all this talk about govt being "anti-democratic" conveniently forgets that it is the people themselves(directly by voting or indirectly by not voting) who elected the govt.

Considering this point, it makes sense. I guess ultimately it's the citizens fault. The people didn't vote for the government for important things like economic policies or progressive development. People voted for the government for things like "ram mandir", which is a luxury for us right now. Indian citizens don't seem to have a sense of priority.

You are saying "is it worth giving govt so much power" but ideally,giving power to govt is no different than giving power to ourselves in a democracy.

I only partially agree with this. A government can choose to do whatever they want once in power, they are not obligated to deliver everything in their manifesto and do whatever they like, such as incorporating facial recognition in this case with no proper justification. The public is not reliable in this case because it is easy to sell them a statement like "this will help catch terrorists" and they will gladly sign away their fundamental rights, right to privacy in this case. The government can reduce the power of the people by instilling fear. To what extent is it worth suspending your fundamental rights to catch terrorists? Thing is that this is not even something new, Hitler did this to introduce the Gestapo to fight communists, who were portrayed as arsonists and anarchists, but the Gestapo were actually used to hunt down Jews and political dissidents. So I think the power of the people is really an illusion for us, mostly because of the unreliable nature of the public.

What I mean to say is that people should not choose such leaders in the first place if they think they can not give them enough power.

Agreed.

Just take a simple example,all this talk about misuse of surveillance in the name of curbing terrorism & yet how do you think those terrorists so easily get false identification papers/sims/bank accounts & what not.Just see all these bank frauds being committed on the basis of fraud bank accounts & cases of Jharkand villages/towns where committing bank fraud is now somewhat of a cottage industry.If a govt started adopting western level privacy protection measures in states like Jharkhand,you tell me how anyone is going to stop a terrorist from getting all the documents/sims he want from these areas. People want western world privileges without following the good civic behaviour of western world citizens.

There are ways of doing this without privacy invasive measures. Getting falsified documents has nothing to do with mass surveillance/facial identification, it means a flaw in the process or inability (incompetence?) of bank workers or SIM providers in identifying forged documents or verification of identity of the persons. Do we need mass facial recognition just because people commit bank fraud or gets a SIM card by creating false documents? That is a flaw in the identity verification workflow. If it is so simple for unauthorized people to get SIM cards, perhaps there should be more stringent verification measures. But stringent verification is a far cry from public facial recognition.

If we want benefits like western countries, we obviously need to start with real education, not just degrees.

High population means more competition, which means no one really has the luxury to study for knowledge and everyone just wants to get ahead of each other. Couple this with fetishization of MBAs, IITs and IAS jobs and you see what the problems are. People are more concerned with forming an identity as a MBA, IIT, BE graduate than actual knowledge. It should not be this way but unfortunately this is the reality of our society right now.

Also college education is just too cheap if you compare with any developed nation - cheap things not always the best.

Education is not cheap is a lot of developed countries. It is cheap or even free in some mostly due to being heavily subsidized by their governments. Main thing for them is the lack of competition due to lower population. As such, their citizens don't have the pressure and are more comfortable switching their careers if they don't feel like it. But here in India, no one has that luxury.

Govt. would not curb many things as it will have serious social effect on typical "desi" mentality. So we are in a limbo of future development and old shitty mentality of the masses.

Agreed. But I think we must aspire to improve.

So let us welcome the surveillance or whatever measure is going to be introduced - we will adapt and overcome

Overcome how? We will be at the mercy of our glorious overlords.

 

[whitestar_999]

There are ways of doing this without privacy invasive measures. Getting falsified documents has nothing to do with mass surveillance/facial identification, it means a flaw in the process or inability (incompetence?) of bank workers or SIM providers in identifying forged documents or verification of identity of the persons. Do we need mass facial recognition just because people commit bank fraud or gets a SIM card by creating false documents? That is a flaw in the identity verification workflow. If it is so simple for unauthorized people to get SIM cards, perhaps there should be more stringent verification measures. But stringent verification is a far cry from public facial recognition.

My point was that such technologies don't work in vacuum.e.g.cctv without facial recognition is pretty pointless to stop an imminent threat because 24*7 human monitoring of important sites in cities like Delhi & Mumbai is simply not possible.This works with assumption that terrorists already got all the required documents/sims & moving onto their target. Of course what you describe is an ideal situation where such things are not required in the first place because terrorists failed to get documents/sims because of stringent checks but chances of that happening are certainly lower than 1st option(basing this on fact that facial recognition/tech will certainly improve in next few years compared to hoping Indian society mentality will change in same next few years).

Education is not cheap is a lot of developed countries. It is cheap or even free in some mostly due to being heavily subsidized by their governments. Main thing for them is the lack of competition due to lower population. As such, their citizens don't have the pressure and are more comfortable switching their careers if they don't feel like it. But here in India, no one has that luxury.

Correct but one major issue with education in India is govt control & you don't need to look around to know what happens when govt tries to run a sector/industry(bsnl,air india,railways,defense psu,psb). If there is good enough education available in India then people can even create opportunities for themselves & won't have to think about switching careers in the first place.

 

[topgear]

Considering this point, it makes sense. I guess ultimately it's the citizens fault. The people didn't vote for the government for important things like economic policies or progressive development. People voted for the government for things like "ram mandir", which is a luxury for us right now. Indian citizens don't seem to have a sense of priority.

I only partially agree with this. A government can choose to do whatever they want once in power, they are not obligated to deliver everything in their manifesto and do whatever they like, such as incorporating facial recognition in this case with no proper justification. The public is not reliable in this case because it is easy to sell them a statement like "this will help catch terrorists" and they will gladly sign away their fundamental rights, right to privacy in this case. The government can reduce the power of the people by instilling fear. To what extent is it worth suspending your fundamental rights to catch terrorists? Thing is that this is not even something new, Hitler did this to introduce the Gestapo to fight communists, who were portrayed as arsonists and anarchists, but the Gestapo were actually used to hunt down Jews and political dissidents. So I think the power of the people is really an illusion for us, mostly because of the unreliable nature of the public.

Agreed.

There are ways of doing this without privacy invasive measures. Getting falsified documents has nothing to do with mass surveillance/facial identification, it means a flaw in the process or inability (incompetence?) of bank workers or SIM providers in identifying forged documents or verification of identity of the persons. Do we need mass facial recognition just because people commit bank fraud or gets a SIM card by creating false documents? That is a flaw in the identity verification workflow. If it is so simple for unauthorized people to get SIM cards, perhaps there should be more stringent verification measures. But stringent verification is a far cry from public facial recognition.

High population means more competition, which means no one really has the luxury to study for knowledge and everyone just wants to get ahead of each other. Couple this with fetishization of MBAs, IITs and IAS jobs and you see what the problems are. People are more concerned with forming an identity as a MBA, IIT, BE graduate than actual knowledge. It should not be this way but unfortunately this is the reality of our society right now.

Education is not cheap is a lot of developed countries. It is cheap or even free in some mostly due to being heavily subsidized by their governments. Main thing for them is the lack of competition due to lower population. As such, their citizens don't have the pressure and are more comfortable switching their careers if they don't feel like it. But here in India, no one has that luxury.

Agreed. But I think we must aspire to improve.

Overcome how? We will be at the mercy of our glorious overlords.

Yes, it's higher education is free or cheap in some developed countries but what I meant to say was about the recent incidents of JNU or Jadavpur University of WB are not the most ideal example of how college student should behave. If we can make them financially responsible for their blunders and stop politics on college premises a lot of chaos could be controlled. Also discrimination between reserved and general is sometimes just too much.

How to overcome honestly I don't have any idea but anyway we need to get by - not saying if overlords do some thing wrong we should not disagree.

Yes, we ought to aspire to improve but also leave those we want to rot in hell or we will be dragged down.

"High population means more competition, which means no one really has the luxury to study for knowledge and everyone just wants to get ahead of each other. Couple this with fetishization of MBAs, IITs and IAS jobs and you see what the problems are. People are more concerned with forming an identity as a MBA, IIT, BE graduate than actual knowledge. It should not be this way but unfortunately this is the reality of our society right now."

You deserve a standing ovation for this only.

I know there would be use and misuse of the system we are talking so much about but rest assured due to incompetence of the people who will work for these systems everything would not work as the way "they "wanted.

 

[Extreme Gamer]

People like to defend the system and citing population issues,, but I think it is important to point out that China has a bigger population and that population still mostly has a better quality of life than us.

While you would not be wrong in pointing out that we are a free country while China is authoritarian, it is important to point out that other than elections (mostly) our own state machinery is used against the populace and against political opponents freely. Regardless of who is in power. Plus China's government can do what it wants because it has the tacit approval of the majority of its population, which has seen significant economic progress even if it has been at the expense of ideological opponents.

 

[topgear]

People like to defend the system and citing population issues,, but I think it is important to point out that China has a bigger population and that population still mostly has a better quality of life than us.

While you would not be wrong in pointing out that we are a free country while China is authoritarian, it is important to point out that other than elections (mostly) our own state machinery is used against the populace and against political opponents freely. Regardless of who is in power. Plus China's government can do what it wants because it has the tacit approval of the majority of its population, which has seen significant economic progress even if it has been at the expense of ideological opponents.

Do you remember China was the first to Curb it's population issue with laws - it was not a proper one but ultimately it was and is effective. Did you ever heard Chinese people fighting over religious issues ? China is almost thrice in size compared to ours. More people leads to lesser quality of life and vice versa. This is why countries with high birth rates are the worst ones.

Just read the below article and see if you can still agree with population control is just a matter which can be ignored :
Rohingya crisis: Population exploding as 91,000 babies are born in two years

 

[Extreme Gamer]

It wasn't that effective. China is facing a problem of ageing population, and they had to revise their policy from one child to two children.

Chinese people don't fight over religious issues now because there is a strong degree of state control on religion. I'm sure you've heard about several incidents where bibles were confiscated. IIRC the majority of Chinese people identify as irreligious.

Also China being "thrice" our size is a misleading statement. Populations are not distributed uniformly across the landmass. The vast majority are ethnic Han Chinese who live on the eastern side. If you've ever been to Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai or Beijing you will find the population density to be similar to that of Indian cities. At which point I will point out that in India the population is potentially more uniformly distributed, as we have fewer cities, and more of our population as a percentage lives in rural areas compared to China.

Also I had never said that having more people does not lead to a lower quality of life. My argument is that the quality of life the vast majority of us experience is purely out of mismanagement rather than population explosion. I will also point out that we have been extremely successful in our own population control measures, and the census data attests to that.

 

[whitestar_999]

Chinese system is completely different & cannot be compared to India. Majority of China is Han & they are used to living under a "central emperor rule" much longer than Indians with their numerous communities based on caste,region,religion etc under equally numerous rulers(practically speaking India never lived under a central emperor rule after Ashoka's rule in 230BC,even mughals & british rule cannot be compared to his rule).

 

[Extreme Gamer]

That's the thing, India has been largely divided since time immemorial, however none of that excuses the post-independence misgovernance that has plagued this country for decades.

 

[bssunilreddy]

That's the thing, India has been largely divided since time immemorial, however none of that excuses the post-independence misgovernance that has plagued this country for decades.

Divided on what terms?
If one thinks one way others thinks so many other ways and there are some who gain by this wishful thinking.
Backwards is not based on economic factors but socio factors.
We are still the same since AD...

Let us come out of this kind of mould of thinking and give talented people a chance to do good to this land.

 

[Extreme Gamer]

Divided on more ways than one. Political, cultural, economic, as well as ethnographic.

United India as a proper country along eurocentric lines did not officially exist until it was partitioned in 1947.

Ancient empires which united large swathes of the subcontinent did not claim to be emperors of undivided an undivided Indian nation.

 

[bssunilreddy]

Divided on more ways than one. Political, cultural, economic, as well as ethnographic.

United India as a proper country along eurocentric lines did not officially exist until it was partitioned in 1947.

Ancient empires which united large swathes of the subcontinent did not claim to be emperors of undivided an undivided Indian nation.

Caste System should be abolished. But this cannot be done without awareness among the massess that Caste does not bring any good to them or to the nation at large.
What is the use of all these advancements in education system if we cannot think that " All men are created equal"
Maybe Article 370 is a step into that direction. Maybe... I hope so...

 

[Extreme Gamer]

Article 370 should be removed but after winning the hearts of the population, not after putting them on lockdown based on deceit and lies. It's also ironic that the same government is reassuring the states of the sanctity of Article 371 which has largely the same provisions.