Someone to watch over us

NEW DELHI: Who doesn’t have an uncle who, every once in a while, looks up from his newspaper and says, “What this country needs is a military dictatorship!” It’s said in our tradition that prayers rendered frequently and fervently will duly be answered, and so we now seem to have the tryst with, er, destiny that our uncles have always wanted—not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. Given this desire of our uncles, it should surprise no one that a survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) has found nationwide support for the State’s use of surveillance technology to keep tabs on political dissent and other challenges. It also found very low awareness of the right to privacy, which the Supreme Court has certified as fundamental.

The findings of the survey, done in 11 cities and in Delhi, are a dictator’s delight: Forty-five per cent of the respondents strongly supported the use of mass surveillance technology by the government for suppressing protests and political movements. A majority of them (57%) supported the use of mobile phone surveillance for such purposes. There was 75% support for mass digital surveillance by the government and 57% support for targeted digital surveillance by the government.

No less than 51% of the respondents justified, either carte blanche or in some cases, the government’s use of Pegasus spyware against MPs and MLAs. At least 33% justified its use against judges, lawyers, journalists, politicians, bureaucrats, NGOs and even businessmen. More than 60 percent support the use of facial recognition technology to identify protestors, two out of five say it should be used to identify common citizens. Three out of five people strongly believe that the police should be able to tap an accused person’s phone or CCTV footage without a warrant. Lastly, only about one in six respondents has heard about the right to privacy judgement by the Supreme Court. Only about one out of two persons fully agrees with the judgement.

These facts are alarming but it’s not the first time that surveys have returned such findings. They indicate that Indians continue to perceive surveillance technology primarily as a crime-solving tool and are not particularly well-informed about its potential as an instrument of State control of civic life. This must spring from the abiding notion of the government as a ration-providing all-powerful government rather than as a political entity that is ever alert to any challenge to its power.

But the findings throw up a curious truth about how various sections of society relate to the State. Across various parameters of this study, the poor come through as much less enamoured of surveillance technology than people in the higher income groups. Level of education too seems to correlate with acceptance of State monitoring of data. Conversely, minorities like Sikhs and Muslims are not too warm about surveillance. People in the BJP-ruled states are seemingly more enthusiastic about surveillance.

Disappointing as these findings might be to any advocate of civil liberties, it does not quite follow that Indians are okay with being surveilled. The real truth about our acceptance of surveillance tech might perhaps emerge if the question was framed differently. Instead of asking whether it’s OK for the state to surveil citizens, the citizen should be asked if he or she, rather than an anonymous third party, would be OK with being watched. The response would perhaps be very different.