The snooping on the WhatsApp messages of journalists, lawyers and activists in India with the Israeli spyware, Pegasus, can indicate one of two things — either the current dispensation is hand-in-glove with the spying or it is incapable of protecting the privacy of its citizens. The Opposition should take up this issue seriously in the upcoming winter session of Parliament. Alarmingly, there is no clarity on how many people have actually been targeted.
What makes Pegasus really dangerous is that it spares no aspect of a person’s identity. It makes older techniques of spying seem relatively harmless. Pegasus is said to have played a role in spying on the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who was later murdered in cold blood. In spite of such evidence and, according to WhatsApp, a warning from the organization in May 2019, Indian authorities paid little attention to the magnitude of the problem. The makers of Pegasus claim that the spyware is sold only to government agencies. Clearly, it can easily be misused by the government to spy on citizens. This amounts to a breach of the fundamental right to privacy guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. The alleged spying on Opposition leaders and activists in India reminds one of the illegal espionage in the Watergate scandal.
It is incumbent on Parliament, the judiciary and Facebook, the company that owns WhatsApp, to plug the breach of privacy and nail those responsible for it. Those claiming that their phones were hacked — the chief minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, is among them — should approach the apex court for redress. There should be a separate law governing data protection and privacy. This issue has to be taken seriously; after all, spying by an “unknown” foreign agency can be a matter of national security.
Data privacy, also called information privacy, is the aspect of information technology (IT) that deals with the ability an organization or individual has to determine what data in a computer system can be shared with third parties.
In the United States, legislation concerning data privacy has been enacted in a sectorial manner, which means that each law or compliance regulation has been created in response to the needs of a particular industry or section of the population.
Alekhya blog 