Concerns over 'Surveillance State': Can Excessive Data Monitoring Lead to Discrimination?

The Supreme Court on July 13 took strong note of the Ministry of Data and Broadcastings decision to gear up up a social media hub for monitoring online data. It observed that such a movement will be "similar creating a surveillance state" and issued a find to the key government on a plea past Mahua Moitra of the Trinamool Congress (TMC). Surveillance and data driven methods would lead to discrimination against people.

Social media giant Facebook stated in its biannual transparency report in May that the Indian authorities had requested the company to share data over 12,000 times in the 2nd half of 2017. The Indian government is 2nd in the global list — right later on the US — of countries that sought the data of Facebook users from their respective countries.

Government Surveillance Programs

Many dimensions of surveillance are exploited by both regime and private agencies. From CCTV cameras capturing our images routinely, regime-provided IDs, our smart phones, credit cards, biometric recorders, etc., are all used for various surveillance purposes.

A major problem with surveillance is that it reduces identity to data packages like "where we live", "what we consume", "how we spend", "where we surf", etc. They ignore the man core of our multifaceted existence and create categories of administrative, organisational and business convenience.

The need for such varied, sometimes insensitive, and intense surveillance is justified past these agencies citing rubber of citizens, speedy processing, control of anti-social elements and better coordination for governance. Nevertheless, ensuring the safety of the data, the merit of the agencies involved in processing the data is often unconvincing. Even Mark Zuckerberg had to admit and apologise to a Congressional committee after the massive information leak, affecting the privacy of millions of FB users worldwide.

Along with worries over breaches of privacy, surveillance often brings mechanisms to discriminatively categorise people. As a country with a history of multiple forms of bigotry, India is at greater gamble. People in liminal spaces, those culturally, legally, or politically marked equally the "other", are more than likely to fear negative labelling, since it could limit their life chances.

Unconscious Bigotry

Iv UN rapporteurs recently raised an warning about whether the Bengali Muslim minorities in Assam might go discriminated against in the National Register of Citizens compilation process, raising anxiety over the information generated through surveillance mechanisms.

The coding and classifying mechanisms in many Big Data processes tin consciously or unconsciously perpetuate such categories of socio-culturally prevalent existing prejudices and stereotypes. The post-September 2001 grip of Islamophobia is worth reflecting over. Narratives like "My Name is Khan" typify the problems of marking members of a specific customs as "doubtable".

Aadhaar Surveillance

Surveillance came into the public sphere with colonisation. Bharat is one of the primeval spaces were fingerprinting was used for pinning identities. The British employed information technology for two unlike purposes: To sign business contracts with the natives and to identify and notify criminals. Today, with Automatic Identification and Data Capture Technologies (AIDC) like Aadhaar, the state could use information for various purposes and monitor us in newer ways. Those who corroborate are more likely to get a positive, law-abiding identity than those without it.

Automation, standardisation and instrumentality involved in the process reduce negotiable spaces of social interaction and convert them into binaries, viz. accept or turn down, legitimate or illegitimate, etc. This decreases the chances of the oppressed and excluded — who are more likely to exist ignorant of the data-driven norms — past depriving them of negotiable spaces for empowerment. If credit worthiness of someone seeking a loan has to be determined by CIBIL, or Credit Data Agency (India) Express, people with less admission to banking are more likely to lose.

And then, the use of data generated through surveillance becomes not merely a thing of safety and privacy, but likewise one for the denial of social justice. While the rich capitalise on data-driven modes of transaction by virtue of their technological competence and affordability, the poor become victims of surveillance. Thus, the digital carve up furthers the gulf betwixt the rich and poor.

The Information Contend

Today, across the world, debates on the employ of data are largely a merchandise-off between national security, development and civil liberties, with the erstwhile two taking precedence. Production of searchable databases increases the exclusion of undesirable people. This varies co-ordinate to changing circumstances and government policies. For example, the regime'south logic of finding eligible beneficiaries for welfare programmes has changed with the increase in population and its diversity. Databases make it possible to quickly place and plant new categories of convenience.

Data is neither devoid of the authorities's policy goals nor a conspiracy in itself. Considering the challenges of governance and global shifts, information-driven approaches have come to stay. Notwithstanding, irrespective of the goals, the circuitous process of information assemblage leads to privacy concerns. The country's potential to assign identities aggravates with surveillance and may lead to the loss of the individual's agential power.

Data-based processing fosters superficial and surveillance-driven approaches. A healthy society must repose organized religion on the common trust between individuals and institutions. If a social club leans heavily on such standardised Big Data processes, it is bound to compromise on the humane and democratic ethos.

It is the duty of civil society to brainwash and kindle the thought process of "ordinary citizens" to understand and resist the uncritical credence of drowning in information.

– By Padmakumar K.M. and Om Prakash Fifty.T.

Source: https://beebom.com/concerns-over-surveillance-state-can-excessive-data-monitoring-lead-to-discrimination/

Posted by: rutledgetheyer56.blogspot.com

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