Mapping the rise of the surveillance state amid the COVID-19 crisis

Posted on by Tech Law Forum NALSAR

[This post has been authored by Noyanika Batta, a Senior Associate at Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan Attorneys. She is a 2018 graduate from Gujarat National Law University.]

There exist dichotomous views on the usefulness of surveillance and its relationship with public health. The disease control strategies adopted by the states often necessitate extensive surveillance practices having an overbearing and intrusive effect on the daily lives of its citizens. The debate thus lies in striking the right balance between public health and the need to strengthen public health infrastructures vis-a-vis privacy protection for individual citizens. With the rapid spread of COVID19 debilitating economies and causing health systems across the globe to crumble, it became imperative for governments and organizations to take immediate actions to protect its people. This in turn saw a fierce boom in surveillance technologies dedicated towards monitoring whole populations, with governments trying to chart the virus’ trajectory from broad swathes of personal data. This article seeks to examine the disproportionate risks to data privacy caused by the use of invasive and pervasive technologies such as contact tracing across the world.

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Facial Recognition and Data Protection: A Comparative Analysis of laws in India and the EU (Part I)

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[This two-part post has been authored by Riddhi Bang and Prerna Sengupta, second year students at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Part II can be found here]

With the wave of machine learning and technological development, a new system that has arrived is the Facial Recognition Technology (FRT). From invention to accessibility, this technology has grown in the past few years. Facial recognition comes under the aegis of biometric data which includes distinctive physical characteristics or personal traits of a person that can be used to verify the individual. FRT primarily works through pattern recognition technology which detects and extracts patterns from data and matches it with patterns stored in a database by creating a biometric ‘template’. This technology is being increasingly deployed, especially by law enforcement agencies and thus raises major privacy concerns. This technology also attracts controversy due to potential data leaks and various inaccuracies. In fact, in 2020, a UK Court of Appeal ruled that facial recognition technology employed by law enforcement agencies, such as the police, was a violation of human rights because there was “too broad a discretion” given to police officers in implementing the technology. It is argued that despite the multifarious purposes that this technology purports to serve, its use must be regulated.

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The Internet and Marginalised Genders: A Comment in view of the Intermediary Guidelines, 2021

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[Varsha Singh is a fifth-year law student and contributing editor at robos of Tech Law and Policy, a platform for marginalized genders in the technology law and policy field. This essay is part of an ongoing collaboration between r – TLP and the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Blog and is the third post in the series. Previous entries can be found here.]

We live an increasingly online everyday life. Today, internet platforms are at the helm of conversations, dominating interactions and impacting relationships between social actors. These platforms’ power and control play a role in furthering fundamental values such as the right to communication and access to knowledge and information. Policies that govern this control, both at self-regulatory and state levels, should ensure the protection of such rights and freedoms while ensuring that users can reap these platforms’ benefits. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology recently published Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 to regulate intermediaries. While these guidelines adversely affect users’ rights and freedoms in general, the adverse effect is amplified manifold when it comes to marginalised genders, especially in light of India’s socio-political and cultural contexts.

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Metadata by TLF: Issue 20

Posted on by Tech Law Forum NALSAR

Welcome to our fortnightly newsletter, where our reporters Harsh Jain and Harshita Lilani put together handpicked stories from the world of tech law! You can find other issues here, and you can sign up for future editions of the the newsletter here.

Facebook-Australia standoff ends as both parties agree to truce

Facebook has reached an agreement with the Australian Government and will restore news pages in the country days after restricting them. The decision follows negotiations between the tech giant and the Australian Government, which is set to pass a new media law that will require digital platforms to pay for news. The law, if passed, will make digital platforms pay local media outlets and publishers to link their content in news feeds or search results. Under the amendments, the Australian Government will give digital platforms and news publishers two months to mediate and broker commercial deals before subjecting them to mandatory arbitration under the proposed media law. Both Google and Facebook have fought against the media law since last year. Google previously threatened to remove its search service from Australia in response to the proposed law. But the company has since struck commercial deals with local publishers including the Murdoch family-owned media conglomerate News Corp. Facebook, for its part, followed through with a threat to remove news features from Australia.

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Data Exploitation and Discrimination Through “Empowering” Femtech Apps

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[The following post has been authored by Yashaswini Santuka, a third year student of NALSAR University of Law. This essay is part of an ongoing collaboration between r – TLP and the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Blog and is the second post in the series. The first entry can be found here, and the rest of series is available here.]

Female healthcare and technology related to it, like other women-centric issues, are often suppressed and kept away from the spotlight. This is the result of years of direct and indirect suppression of women and their autonomy (bodily or otherwise), which has results in an increase in the popularity of technology aimed at “empowering” women. However, if the goal of tech-empowered, health tracking apps is to enable people to make informed medical choices, femtech companies have built apps that go beyond this goal. They have managed to successfully blur the line between healthcare and technology, going so far as to becoming apps designed primarily for men and violating the privacy of those it was meant to benefit. This article seeks to address the blatantly discriminatory nature of these apps, the privacy issues that come with entering data into the apps and the legal protection that users are entitled to.

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Facebook and its Oversight Board: Regulatory Attempts in an Impractical Relationship

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[Lian Joseph is a fourth-year law student and contributing editor at robos of Tech Law and Policy, a platform for marginalized genders in the technology law and policy field. This essay is part of an ongoing collaboration between r – TLP and the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Blog. Posts in the series may be found here.]

Facebook’s Oversight Board (OB) was instituted to respond to the growing concerns regarding Facebook’s inadequate content moderation standards. The company has been alleged to have proliferated and played an important role in several instances of human right violations, hate and misinformation campaigns related to elections and COVID 19 among other issues. The introduction of the OB – the Facebook Supreme Court, as it has been dubbed – was met with a lot of skepticism, with many arguing that it was an attempt to deflect actual accountability. The Board was established as an independent body with a maximum of 40 members, separate from Facebook’s content review process with the power to review decisions made by the company and suggest changes and recommendations. Notably, the OB will be reviewing cases that are of grave concern and have potential to guide future decisions and policies. Appeals can be made by the original poster or the person who previously submitted it for review or by Facebook itself referring matters.

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Deciphering the Relationship Between IoT and Its Users (Part II)

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[This post has been authored by Amishi Aggarwal, a 2nd year student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Part I is available here.]

As discussed in the previous post, the nature of an IoT device as a fiduciary is jeopardized due to the conflict of interest involved. However, as previously mentioned, these conflicts of interest are not entirely forbidden, and full disclosure of the same to the principal is required, along with subsequent consent.[1]

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Deciphering the Relationship Between IoT and Its Users (Part I)

Posted on by Tech Law Forum NALSAR

[This two-part essay has been authored by Amishi Aggarwal, a 2nd year student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Part II is available here.]

With the advancement of new forms of technology, new kinds of contractual relationships are being formed. Contract law, especially in India where it was codified more than a century ago, is not equipped to deal with new relationships which have emerged due to modern technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI). A glaring example of these new contractual relationships are those entered into by Internet of Things (IoT) on behalf of the users.

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News Publishers and the Claim for Remuneration: An Analysis (Part II)

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[This two-part post has been authored by Soham Chakraborty, a third year student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Part I can be found here.]

Part 1 of the article looked at the arguments being made by news publishers and news aggregators. It also looked at various laws passed by different countries in the past and their impacts in the respective countries. This part will attempt to analyze the Australian law in light of the history of such agreements and also tries to make some policy suggestions going forward.

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