A student-run group at NALSAR University of Law
This piece, taking an optimistic view of the use of AI in the legal industry, has been authored by Priyal Agrawal and Laxmi Rathore. They are currently in their 3rd year at the Kirit P. Mehta School of Law, NMIMS, Mumbai.
“In the long term, artificial intelligence and automation are going to be taking over so much of what gives humans a feeling of purpose.” – Matt Bellamy
[Ed Note: This post is the first in a series of posts by members of TLF who attended the Facebook Design Jam in Hyderabad on 10 July 2019. It has been authored by Namratha Murugeshan, a final year student at NALSAR University of Law and member of TLF.]
Members of TLF’s Organizing Committee were invited to attend Facebook’s Data Awareness Design Jam on the 10th of July 2019. A Design Jam is an event that provides a platform for start-ups and designers to pitch and improve their products. They are typically very interactive and informative sessions that help the participants gain new perspectives about their products and learn more about compliance with law and policy. Likewise, Facebook’s event too was an excellent opportunity for us to interact with start-ups, professionals, policymakers, designers and surprisingly, quite a few lawyers too. A key takeaway for the TLF members present at the event was gaining knowledge about the consumer perspectives surrounding data protection in India. A panel discussion on the same topic was organized at the Jam. The speakers included Smriti Parsheera from NIPFP (National Institute of Public Finance and Policy), Shagufta Gupta from CUTS (Consumer Unity & Trust Society) and Prerak Mehta from Dalberg Global Development Advisors. This post is a brief on the panel discussion.
[Ed Note : In an interesting read, Shweta Rao of NALSAR University of Law brings us upto speed on the debate regarding regulation of the mysterious “dark web” and provides us with a possible way to proceed as far as this hidden part of the web is concerned. ]
Human Traffickers, Whistleblowers, Pedophiles, Journalists and Lonely-Hearts Chat-room participants all find a home on the Dark Web, the underbelly of the World Wide Web that is inaccessible to the ordinary netizen. The Dark Web is a small fraction of the Deep Web, a term it is often confused with, but the distinction between the two is important.
[Ed Note : The following post is based on Dr. Ramanathan’s enlightening talk at the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. It has been authored by Karthik Subramaniam and Yashasvi Raj, first year students of the aforementioned university, who, in a slightly longer but informative read aptly put forth Dr. Ramanathan’s views on the Aadhar issue and its judicial journey.
Dr. Usha Ramanathan, an internationally recognized legal expert, is currently research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and professor at the Indian Law Institute. Since 2009, she has consistently brought forth the loopholes in the Aadhar project, exposing its shoddy functioning.]
A cashless society is no longer a myth but an impending reality, one of the causes for concern is the issue of privacy which this article deals with.
The idea of a cashless society, i.e., ‘a civilization holding money, but without its most distinctive material representation – cash’, is said to have originated in the late 1960s. The transition to go cashless had been slow and steady, but it is now increasing at a rapid pace this last decade. As technology evolves, the shift from a cash reliant to a cashless society is becoming more apparent. At least in the urban society, using ‘contactless payments’ or ‘non-cash money’ is not unheard of. It has been reported that not only did the first debit card possibly hit the markets in the mid-1960s but that in 1990, debit cards were used in about 300 million transactions, showing the rise of the same in today’s society. Before welcoming this change with open arms, we must take care that we do not ignore the security and privacy concerns, some of which will be addressed in this article.
As we are transitioning from a cash-reliant society to a [quasi] cashless society, there are some fears about phones being hacked or stolen, or reliance placed on devices which require batteries or internet – what if either is not available? However, conversely, our cash or wallets could be stolen, destroyed in a matter of seconds, could be misplaced, etc. The only difference is the medium of transaction.
Fear is a factor which inhibits change, however these fears are usually not unfounded. In the year 2014, Target, the second-largest discount store retailer in the United States was hacked and up to 70 million customers were hit by a data breach. Furthermore, 2 years later, it was reported that roughly 3.2 million debit cards were compromised in India, affecting several banks such as SBI, ICICI, HDFC, etc.
Nevertheless, as earlier pointed out, just as financial details present online can be stolen, so can paper money. With each transaction taking place online, the fears of online fraud are present, however Guri Melby of Liberal (Venstre) party noted, “The opportunity for crime and fraud does not depend on what type of payment methods we have in society.” A mere shift in the means of trade will not eliminate such crimes. It is here that I must clarify that a cashless society could be in various forms and degrees, be it debit/credit cards, NFC payments, digital currencies such as bitcoin or even mobile transactions such as M-Pesa.
Bruce Schneier, cyber security expert and author of best seller, Data and Goliath, notes that the importance of privacy lies in protection from abuse of power. A hegemony of the authorities over our information – details [and means] of our every transaction – provides absolute power to the authorities and thus a much higher scope for abuse. Daniel Solove, further notes that abuse of power by the Government could lead to distortion of data; however, even if we believe the government to be benevolent, we must consider that data breaches and hack could (and do) occur.
Cash brings with it the double-edged sword of an anonymity that digital transactions do not provide. A completely cashless society might seem attractive in that each transaction can be traced and therefore possibly result in reduction of tax evasion or illicit and illegal activities; however, though that crime might cease to exist in that form, it could always evolve and manifest itself in some other form online.
One of the concerns raised in this regard is that the government could indefinitely hold or be in possession of our transaction history. This seems to be an innocent trade-off for the ease and convenience it provides. The issue that arises however, as Domagoj Sajter notes, is that every single citizen has become a potential criminal and a terrorist to the government, worthy of continuous and perpetual monitoring. The citizens become latent culprits whose guilt is implied, only waiting to be recorded and proven. The principle of innocent till proven guilty vanishes in the mind of the government.
Furthermore, a completely cashless society places power with the Government with no checks and balances of the same. Advanced technology could disable funding of mass actions, extensive protests and large-scale civil disobediences, all of which are important traits of democratic processes. It is pertinent to remember that Martin Luther King Jr. was tracked by the FBI. Providing the government with more ease in curtailing democratic processes leads to a more autocratic governance.
Consider the following: an individual finds out that the Government or one of its agencies is committing a crime against humanity, and she reports it to the public. Not only could her personal life be excavated to find faults but any support that she would receive in terms of money (in a cashless society) could possibly be blocked by the Government. Minor faults could be listed and propaganda could be spread to discredit her point or deviate the masses’ attention. By controlling the economy, they could wring the arms of the media and force them to not focus on or to ignore the issues raised by her.
Michael Snyder also raises an important point about erasure of autonomy in a cashless society, “Just imagine a world where you could not buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without participating in ‘the system’”. It need not start with forcing people to opt-in, simply providing benefits in some form could indirectly give people no choice but to opt-in. The Supreme Court of India has noted multiple times that the Aadhar Card cannot be made compulsory (a biometric identity card). However, the Aadhar card has been made mandatory to avail EPF Pension Schemes, LPG Benefits and even for IIT JEE 2017. The Government of India is even mulling making Aadhaar number mandatory for filing of income tax (I-T) and link all bank accounts to the unique identity number by the end of this financial year. The government is concurrently working on developing a common mobile phone app that can be used by shopkeepers and merchants for receiving Aadhaar-enabled payments, bypassing credit and debit cards and further moving to cashless transactions. The Aadhaar-enabled payment system (AEPS) is a biometric way of making payments, using only the fingerprint linked to Aadhaar. These are all part of the measures taken by the Indian government to brute force the Indian economy into a cashless form.
Policing of the citizen is not a purely hypothetical scenario; it has already taken place in the past. In 2010, a blockade was imposed by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard and PayPal on WikiLeaks. In 2014, Eden Alexander started a crowdfunding campaign hoping to cover her medical expenses, but later, the campaign was shut down and the payments were frozen; the cause being that she was a porn actress. We must also take into account the empowerment that cash provides; consider an individual saving cash from their alcoholic or abusive spouse, or the individual who stuffs spare notes under her mattress for years because it gives her a sense of autonomy. We should take care that in seeking development, we do not disempower the downtrodden, but lift them up with us.
The idea of a cashless society is no longer strange, with multiple corporations and even countries having expressed their interest in going cashless. Harvard economist and former chief economist of the IMF, Kenneth Rogoff in his Case Against Cash argues that a less-cash society [in contradistinction to a cash-less society] could possibly reduce economic crime, he suggests in the same article that this could be executed by a gradual phasing out of larger notes. A cashless or less-cash society is inevitable. In Sweden, cash transactions made up barely 2% of the value of all payments made. The question thus is not about when [it will happen] but what are the safeguards we set up to protect our rights.
For further reading:
1] Melissa Farmer: Data Security In A Cashless Society
https://www.academia.edu/12799515/Data_Security_In_A_Cashless_Society
2] David Naylor, Matthew K. Mukerjee and Peter Steenkiste: Balancing Accountability and Privacy in the Network
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dnaylor/APIP.pdf
3] Who would actually benefit from a Cashless Society?
https://geopolitics.co/2016/01/30/who-would-benefit-from-a-cashless-society/
4] Anne Bouverot: Banking the unbanked: The mobile money revolution
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/06/opinion/banking-the-unbanked-mobile-money/index.html
5] Kenneth Rogoff: Costs and benefits to phasing out paper currency
Google launched its first smartphone series called Pixel some time earlier this month. The major shift from being software producer to being both hardware and software producer was a calculated change in policy to take a direct dig at Apple’s hardware throne.
Apple stood as undisputed kings in terms of design and the meticulously designed software which ran on them, perfecting user experience with highest precision. Google on the other hand was the undisputed king of software and search engines, comprising of much higher software offerings than any other. Even the most diehard fans of iPhones spent most of their time on their devices using Google products. The changeover was thus a direct policy measure to cut through Apple’s base in hardware design but providing an alternative with Google’s exclusive product range.
On the surface, the launch seem to be all about glittery issues surrounding the inherent competition between Google and Apple, but the media, customers and the makers of our privacy law often tend to ignore the bigger picture being entangled in the mesh of technology. One of the major components of Google’s cutting edge technology over iPhones is its Artificial Intelligence which promotes active data mining. The absence and presence of privacy norms is what distinguishes the new features of Google from the existing features in Apple devices. The assumption on part of Google is that its customers are willing to give up some amount of privacy in order to make life easier and the assumption on part of iPhone is that customers value their privacy more than anything.
The latest Artificial Intelligence in Pixel allows the software to read mails, text messages, calendars. When Google’s AI magically delivers you the answer to the question you asked, it is a case of data mining. It is not against the law too, because technically on paper you have given Google certain permissions by not reading the fine print or skimming through it, which allows it to read through your chats, mails, location history and browsing and what not for it to give you some magical results. So the argument here is that it mostly not a free consent that people are providing due to lack of important information while making the same choice.
The major shift in terms of technology in the new AI that Google has developed in Pixel is in terms of its ability to actively read and understand the context of an act or a conversation. So for example if you are on either of Google Allo or Google Home and chatting about going for a dinner with your family at a selected time, you can be sure to expect a reminder about the same along with reviews about the restaurant and even a direct link to book an Uber ride. This is because the AI feature reads your conversations, figures out context and links you to your needs over the web.
“Adding to that, the very Google Allo introduced in order to challenge authority of messaging applications like WhatsApp, Snapchat and Messenger is not end to end encrypted like all of these messaging applications are until you move into incognito mode. However, the Incognito mode within the Google Allo is only an optional feature, instead of being a default setting like in secure chat apps such as Apple’s iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. In consequence, Allo’s privacy and security got heavily criticized.”
“NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has criticised Google Allo app on Twitter, and said Google’s decision to disable end-to-end encryption was dangerous. He asked people to avoid using the app, and his tweet has been re-tweeted over 8000 times on the site.”
The problem essentially with this kind of a feature is the fact that it prioritises data mining for ease of access over consumer privacy. The very fact that now privacy of data is an option instead of the norm is what leads to questioning the ethics of data mining however easier it makes one’s life. The fact that a third party is able to store your conversations, read it by actively understanding its context and finally applying the same to aid future actions on your device is what is astounding in this regard.
In another instance if you back up your photos to Google photos, the Google Assistant is capable of recognizing what’s there in the photo using its computer vision wherein it can understand when the same was taken and who all are there in it. Thus the Google AI goes to the extent of not just mining your data but also linking the data excavated to that of other user’s data which Google has excavated through its software. The ultimate end goal is to link the entirity of data collected to create a form of network which is omnipresent but can’t be seen. The question doesn’t arise out of the same networking but out of the means of achieving the same. The data is thus being excavated without a free consent and is being linked with external third party data without prior permission.
Another huge concern surrounding this huge data storage is with government snooping through data packet inspections which exist already in network connections. A switch to Google Pixel means a switch to an almost completely internet run software which further increases chances of breach of privacy.
Google aims at making its artificial intelligence the next big thing post its position in world of search engines and software. It aims to make its customers switch from a mobile first world to an AI first world. But the underlying assumption is that the same can be done at the cost of user privacy.
Ed. Note.: This post, by Benjamin Vanlalvena, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.
A background of the issue
Ed. Note.: This post, by Sayan Bhattacharya, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.
In the world of technology dominated by a power struggle in terms of presence and absence in data circles, Reliance Jio has probably made the biggest tech news of the year with its revolutionary schemes. By adopting a loss-leader strategy of immediate loss and ultimate dominance, Reliance Jio has promised its subscribers stellar features like free voice calls, extremely cheap data packages, abolition of national roaming charges and striking down extra rates on national holidays on shifting to its network. This is set to significantly affect competition by taking India’s data scenario from a data scarcity to data abundance mode.
Ed. Note.: This post, by Sayan Bhattacharya, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.
Search engines which are quintessential to our internet experience are mechanisms of indexing and crawling through data to provide us with a list of links which are most relevant to both our present and past searches. Figuratively, its functions range from directing users to seats in a movie hall to being the very seat in the movie hall.