What Privacy? India Is Among The Top Three Surveillance States In The World, Claims Report

India may technically be the world's most populous democracy in the world. However, we've established before that our government is not above censoring us in a multitude of ways.

Now, thanks to a new report, we also know they're not above surveilling us too.

Images courtesy: Reuters

According to UK-based research firm Compritech, India is one of the top three biggest surveillance states, behind only China and Russia when it comes to spying on citizens.

India scored 2.4 out of 5 on the company's privacy index, which translates to a "systemic failure to maintain privacy safeguards." Russia rated similar.

China rated as having "extensive" surveillance, while Thailand and Malaysia rated #4 and #5 with "some safeguards but weakened protections".

US was the seventh-worst performing non-European country, with a score of 2.7 out of 5. Their main failings were a constant updating of the database of biometric information, as well as data breaches across all sectors, Compritech said.

The survey was conducted across 47 countries, with Compritech measuring various factors like constitutional protections, privacy enforcement, biometrics, data sharing, government access to data, and more. The EU did fairly well, mostly thanks to the recent introduction of the GDPR laws. However, the research firm indicated that "not one country is consistent in protecting the privacy of its citizens." It said some countries like India are "Creating what can only be described as surveillance states, with privacy rights seemingly taking a serious back seat."

For one thing, India's constitution assures a right to privacy, but the lengths of it are not defined. For instance, the Aadhaar identification system has been government-mandated, which forces the collection of biometric data from citizens, and then links it to their government ID, banking systems, and more. On top of that, the Aadhaar system has been breached multiple times as well, showing that all the private data of citizens being taken from them is not even kept secured.

Then there's the recent indication that the government wants to monitor WhatsApp and be able to track and trace messages sent across the platform. They're trying to strong arm the company to break its encryption, so they can keep track of messages, supposedly to crack down on the fake news problem.

Compritech also mentions that India uses a plethora of CCTV cameras, both for governmental security purposes as well as in the private sector. However the privacy laws surrounding them are vague.

Worryingly, the research firm also mentions India's international information sharing practices as privacy violations. They point out that India has multiple mutual legal assistance treaties with different countries. On top of that, 10 different government agencies have the ability to authorise the decryption, monitoring, and interception of data on any computer. If service providers fail to comply with these orders, they could even face prison terms of up to seven years.

"Covert surveillance will also be banned when the new data protection law comes into power," Compritech said about India in its report. "However, with surveillance tactics and biometrics already going incredibly far, it's questionable as to how much law will change things."