[Reader-list] India: 'location based' mobile phones and Privacy

[Harsh Kapoor]

The Times of India
MAY 30, 2003
Editorial

Big Brother's Invading Your Privacy

The launch of 'location based' mobile telephone services in India 
will be seen by many as a harmless innovation aimed at providing 
subscribers on the move with useful information about products they 
may wish to buy or consume.
 
But set against the backdrop of inadequate privacy protection in our 
country, the onset of this  and indeed other new communications 
technologies  raises concerns about the ability of the state to 
intrude into the private domain of the citizen. Cellphone service 
providers have always had the ability to track the movement of 
subscribers as the signals emitted by an individual phone get passed 
from one transmission tower to the next.
 
Sophisticated computer technology allows this information to be 
stored indefinitely and retrieved, perhaps years later, to build a 
profile of an individual's movements in the city.
 
Officially, this information is only meant to be provided to the 
police and intelligence agencies. However, most law-abiding citizens 
will not feel comforted by the ability of the state to keep track of 
their movements. In India, there is the additional problem of the 
police being used by private parties to obtain what is otherwise 
confidential    personal data from mobile service providers who are 
obliged by law to cooperate with the authorities.
 
In the US, after 9/11, the Pentagon is working on an Orwellian 
project to gather as much information as it can about every aspect of 
all citizens under its 'total information awareness' programme. In 
India, the baseline situation is much worse since there is no 
 legislation which deals directly with privacy protection.
 
The problem is compounded by the Vajpayee government's attempts to 
introduce a compulsory ID card system and build a computerised 
database of citizens. Databases are most useful when welfare-oriented 
states use them to develop and target public services. In India, 
however, the government cannot be accused of having any such 
motivation.
 
Rather, the impulse to catalogue and classify citizens is being 
driven by a misplaced sense of 'national security', so that 
'terrorists', 'infiltrators' and other undesirables can be weeded 
out. Such a process will invariably make the state, which already 
enjoys so much of power over the citizen, even more of a leviathan.