Data Privacy Redefined

These days it has become quite fashionable to talk about personal data, information privacy, protection of the right of expression, invasion into the privacy of others and related subjects. The moment a government official or a security specialist says that the government should have the right to know what happens or transpires in the Net or the contents in any e-communication, there is a hoarse cry that such authority is highly draconian and the same if given, is bound to be abused and misused.

Even the Aadhaar Card in the days to come, if used effectively and efficiently, will serve as a tool to locate an individual in India when he produces the same as an ID proof at any hotel or public place. With so many GPS-based apps in the cell, tracing and tracking an individual's movement has never been easier. With so many apps on transport services (quite common in most of the nations and getting popular in India too), suppose we pose a query through the app for the distance from our location to a conference venue which we intend attending later in the day, the app gives us the route by train, car, or by foot, the distance, the time taken etc. Suppose again, as the day progresses, we decide not to go to the conference and go elsewhere instead, and forget about our query raised to the app earlier in the day, most of these apps will promptly remind you in the evening that you are now in the current location and from this location you would take this much time to go to the venue of the conference and should start right away. Perhaps, tech-savvy netizens would appreciate the apps for the reminder it serves. But a security guru or a data privacy connoisseur would be shocked to realise the app is tracing you and tracking your movement. No doubt, this is an invasion into the movement of the individual. It is our own making and we have to blame ourselves for the query to the app earlier, in the first place.

With so many GPS-enabled apps – medical-related, grocery-related, banking apps, routine conveyance apps and daily organiser/scheduler kind of apps – it is extremely easy to build a complete personal profile. In the near future, when you place an order with your grocer for your monthly consumption of cereals and pulses, the app in the mobile can prompt you that as per medical records, you cannot consume so much of these grocery items or the last time you ordered was itself the total consumable limit for you!

Hence data privacy and information secrecy is as much an individual concern as a national issue. If the state is to define what is private data and what is invasion into one's privacy, it is up to the individual to define and decide personal data and the limit which can be shared in public and what can be part of some app and what is never to be stored even in a mobile (like a PIN or a password).

With so much GPS and wifi in Digital India and so much information lying everywhere, it is for the individual to protect his personal information and be on a preventive mode always.

By V Rajendran, Editorial Team