Five New Ways In Which The Government Is Spying On You
The assembly of a
surveillance state is helped by a number of willing private companies, and
today, there are discussions about having AI systems watch CCTV footage, while
building 360-degree profiles from our different social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Some
plans are limited
to specific states, or particular
agencies, while others aremore
national in their scope. And new projects are being
developed and implemented at a worrying rate, even as the government
drags its feet on actually implementing the Draft
Data Protection bill. Here are five of the latest develop-ments in
government surveillance that should have you worried about where things are
headed.
Facebook, Twitter
and Instagram accounts of students should connect to the HRD Ministry
A circular from R
Subrahmanyam, Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development, sent to the
heads of all Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) earlier this month makes it
clear that the government is interested in what students post on their social
media accounts. The letter, which has been accessed by HuffPost India,
states that the objective behind this demand is to share the achievements of
HEIs through social media. The note asks HEIs to
name a faculty or non-faculty member as the Social Media Champion (SMC) of the
institution, with the job of opening and operating FB, Instagram & Twitter accounts for the institution, and connecting these to MHRD accounts. The
SMC must also connect all students’ social accounts with the institution and MHRD.
This would perhaps be
less concerning if the government also didn’t have ahistory
of reprisals against people for their social media posts, often using
a law that has already
been struck down. Earlier this year, a Kashmiri student wasarrested
for a social media post from 2012, which he wrote when he was 12 years old.
Soon after, in Manipur, the BJP went to great lengths to take
action against a student for a Facebook post. In Jharkhand, a Facebook
post led
to a professor’s arrest. In Manipur again, a
journalist
was arrested and charged under NSA for uploading a Facebook video in
which he criticised Narendra Modi and
the state government. With so many examples, it’s easy to understand why people
might be suspicious about attempts to get students to connect
their social media accounts.
Monitoring of
mobile phones, landlines and Internet traffic: On July 4, responding
to a question in the Rajya Sabha about a central monitoring system for mobiles,
landlines and Internet users in the country, IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad
confirmed that the government has a system to monitor all these forms of communication.
“At present, monitoring of Internet traffic through Internet Service Providers
is being done through Internet Monitoring System which is under consideration
for integration with Centralised Montioring System,” Prasad said... read more:
