Viacom146;s watching you

To Indians, unaccustomed as we are to concepts of personal privacy, this seems to be a bit of a storm in a teacup. After all, as a nation we are used to having all details of our personal lives played out in public. We are not, as a people, known for our discretion and will, during job interviews ask for and, if asked gladly disclose information about marital status, age and our family background with a forthrightness that will cause any Western recruiter to blanch.

We are already accustomed to having our internet lives monitored and scrutinised, from frequenting cyber-cafes that record details of everyone who uses the premises required by law in many states to our employers who maintain with impunity detailed logs of our digital footprints from the day we join. The police in India can, in the course of investigating a crime, commandeer information pertaining to anyone8217;s internet behaviour. Earlier this year, Google, on the request of the police, disclosed personal information about Rahul Vaid who was immediately arrested for posting a derogatory comment about Sonia Gandhi. Several other such instances abound even though they may not have made it to the front pages.

We have never thought to question these intrusions of our privacy. We are not even sure we have a right to privacy. Our freedom of speech, which has sometimes been stated to implicitly refer to a right to privacy, is freely and frequently constrained by restrictions imposed in the interests of public order and national security. In that context, the Viacom order, to us, is nothing out of the ordinary.

So how then, is it relevant?

As a nation that has only just gone online and which still has a long way to go, we have yet to experience the full impact of the lack of online privacy. We are yet to suffer the consequences of identity theft where innocent people who accidentally allowed their personal details to get into the hands of unscrupulous hackers have found themselves stripped of their credit history and unable to get a loan or even a job. We are only just discovering how vulnerable our privacy is to technology, as incidents of unauthorised use of webcams and other voyeuristic devices have begun to invade our lives. And all of us, barring possibly Rahul Vaid, are, in general, yet to taste first hand the acutely invasive effect of a police force operating with unfettered powers of online investigation.

We need to question our own apathy to issues of personal privacy. Instances abound all over the world where the abuse of privacy has resulted in serious consequences that are both unjust and difficult, if not impossible to remedy. As we embrace the promise of the internet, we need to brace ourselves to deal with its downsides, even if that means questioning the way that we have functioned so far as a society. If a battle is being waged in the US over the extent to which personal privacy can be sacrificed at the altar of a public investigation, we need to listen in and determine how the rules that are being formulated there can apply to us. We need to articulate a personal right to privacy and all the boundaries of such a right that will apply to protect us from intrusions of the State and corporations alike. Or else be willing to live with the consequences.

The writer is a partner at Trilegal