SURVEILLANCE

THE CASE AGAINST SURVEILLANCE

The case against surveillance. / What was that case against surveillance ? / Surveillance .

Regardless of which govt enhanced powers of surveillance, reform is long overdue .

Last week , a ministry of home affairs (MHA) notification authorising 10 central agencies to intercept ,monitor ,and decrypt online communication and data caused a furore in both parliament and the wider civil society . The notification was described as an incremental step towards a surveillance state . The govts defence was equally shift ; It protested that the notification created no new powers of surveillance . It was only issued under the 2009 information Technology .Rules , sanctioned by the previous united progressive Alliance government . The 10 agencies had not been given a blank check ; rather specific surveillance requests , the govt contended , still had to be authorised by the MHA in accordance with law .

But whatever one makes of the government's defence , the MHA notification lays bare the lopsided character of the surveillance framework in India , and highlights an urgent need for compressive reform .

The Problem

The existing surveillance framework is complex and confusing . Simply put , two statutes control the field ; telephone surveillance is sanctioned under the 1885 Telegraph act an its rules , while electronic surveillance is authorised under the 2000 information technology act  . The procedural  structure in both cases is broadly similar  , and flows from a 1997 supreme court judgment ; surveillance requests have to be signed off by an official who is at least at the level of a joint secretary.


There are three features about the current regime . First, it is bureaucratised . Decisions about surveillance are taken by the executive are taken by the executive branch , with no parliamentary or judicial supervision ; indeed , the fact that an individual will almost never know the she is being surveilled means that finding out  about surveillance, and then challenging it before a court , is a near impossibility .



Second , the surveillance regime is vague and ambiguous . Under section 69 of the IT act , the grounds of surveillance have been simply lifted from article 19(2) of the constitution , and pasted into the law . They include very wide phrases such as "friendly relations with foreign states " or " sovereignty and integrity of India " .

Third , and flowing from the first two features , the  regime is opaque , There is almost no information available about the bases on which surveillance decisions are taken  and how the legal standards are applied . Indeed  evidence sees to suggest that there are none ; a 2014 RTI request  revealed that , on an average , 250 surveillance requests are approved every day , it stands to reason that in a situation like this  approval resembles a rubber stamp more than an independent application of mind .


suggested link ----

Click here to view more interesting facts and information regarding your daily use ...






....................................................