Privacy pitfalls

|
  • 0

Privacy pitfalls

Thursday, 13 December 2018 | Pioneer

Privacy pitfalls

Pichai appeared far more confident than Zuckerberg, but tech companies need to be regulated on privacy matters

Google Chief Executive, the Indian-born Sundar Pichai, appeared confident and answered quite succinctly all questions posed by United States Congressmen at a hearing. His hearing was not the media circus that the hearing of Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was, because Pichai did not appear shifty or deflect questions the way Zuckerberg did. But that does not take away the persistent concerns that users and Governments have about the power of the American technology giants such as Amazon, Facebook and Google. And these companies have been lax in responding to these allegations, with hopes that they will pass through. So much so that Facebook sent a middling executive with little knowledge of the issues at hand to a multinational parliamentary hearing recently in London.

Far too many people have been bothered by the flippant way America’s technology giants have treated privacy concerns, but the fact is that almost every technology company or service provider has been treating data irresponsibly. As some have commented that ‘Data is the new Oil’, the problem is that we are burning that oil irresponsibly and spilling it all over the place. The practice of deep packet inspection by some Indian telecom companies of their Internet traffic is disturbing as is the fact that Facebook and Google mine information from your phone calls and messages to suggest friends and new services to you. Even more worrying is the use of a phone microphone at all times to ostensibly listen for the name of their artificial intelligence driven assistant, something that is even being copied by car companies today in their latest models. Can this information be weaponised? Several Chinese handset manufacturers have become popular in India. Can they burrow through conversations and emails to compromise Indian democracy? Have the actions and inactions of Facebook already compromised elections? These are questions that we hope our smarter legislators can ask, but across the world, thanks in no small part to the power of these technology companies, populists with limited education and knowledge are being elected, which serves the interests of the technology companies to keep doing what they are doing with little or no regulation.

Indeed, it has been very disappointing that the Indian legislature has not done much to further the Supreme Court’s landmark Right to Privacy judgement and gone after the technology majors for the way they use data from India and data of Indians. Not just the American tech giants, but Chinese handset operators, Indian telecom operators as well as companies that have started under the Digital India initiative, have to be questioned by our legislators in public hearings. Otherwise, we are just selling souls online.

Sunday Edition

CAA PASSPORT TO FREEDOM

24 March 2024 | Kumar Chellappan | Agenda

CHENNAI EXPRESS IN GURUGRAM

24 March 2024 | Pawan Soni | Agenda

The Way of Bengal

24 March 2024 | Shobori Ganguli | Agenda

The Pizza Philosopher

24 March 2024 | Shobori Ganguli | Agenda

Astroturf | Lord Shiva calls for all-inclusiveness

24 March 2024 | Bharat Bhushan Padmadeo | Agenda

Interconnected narrative l Forest conservation l Agriculture l Food security

24 March 2024 | BKP Sinha/ Arvind K jha | Agenda