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Daily Vocab Capsule 18th October 2019

Big Tech, Big Government

Courts having a hard time balancing privacy with traceability, but don’t forget individual rights

In India, and in other advanced societies, governments and courts are beginning their reckoning with the

extraordinary difficulties posed by presently existing centralised “social media” and the “platform” companies

that, by operating these media, are changing human civilisation.

These social media or platform companies surveille the daily social behaviour of billions of individuals – reading

their mail, spying on their social interactions, presenting them edited news feeds and personalised advertising,

keeping track of everything they read and watch. The companies have acquired a breadth and depth of social

power over our impulses and behaviour patterns that exceeds any similar form of influence, private or public, in

human history.

This has happened in the blink of an eye on the timescale of history, barely more than a decade. For context, the

first Apple iPhone was launched in 2007. The power of these “technology companies” to amplify human

emotions; to generate outrage and stoke anger; to channel aggression; above all, to move goods and merchandise,

leaves the more traditional powers of law and government staggering, deeply unsure how to respond.

India has been both a pioneer in the human costs and benefits of social media, and in the encounter between the

new forces and the law. The Supreme Court’s Puttaswamy judgment, which affirmed the existence of a

fundamental right of privacy, sets an important fundamental limit on the use of regulation that infringes that right.

Just last month, the Kerala high court recognised that Internet access is also a fundamental right in our

contemporary circumstances.

Despite the importance of these and other precedent judgments, the courts are also apparently tempted to demand

immediate, ill-considered “solutions” to the problems that exercise of these rights pose.

In the past weeks, during the hearing of a petition filed by Facebook to call forth petitions pending in various

high courts, including the one in Madras high court concerning the linking of social media accounts of online

users with their Aadhaar numbers, several observations were made by the bench and the bar. Justice Gupta

observed, “We just cannot get away by saying that we don’t have the technology. If there is a technology to do

it, then there ought to be a technology to stop it.” There have to be strict guidelines. “But my privacy should also

be protected. My personal information cannot be entirely disclosed just because some police commissioner asked

for it... Requesting you to frame the guidelines as soon as possible.”

Such judicial orders requiring that government devise regulations for rendering “traceable” all social media

activity, in order to hold anonymous speakers liable for allegedly defamatory remarks, assume that some simple

technical solution can be imposed on the platform companies to solve all the problems that ails the current state

of Internet.

Although Justice Gupta wants to protect privacy, unrealistic expectations of breaking encryption and having

privacy are compounded by technical misunderstanding and desire for quick fixes. The platform companies, under

pressure to respect the privacy rights of their users, have integrated “end to end” encryption into services such as

WhatsApp. Because the platform intermediary cannot see the content of the messages it handles, it cannot trace

a message as it is forwarded, redistributed or transferred among parties.

Any regulation requiring the intermediary company to render messages traceable, destroying parties’ anonymity,

will inevitably also break the company’s laudable attempts to protect the confidentiality of users’ conversations.

Nor are the orders demanding traceability regulations consistent with the courts’ own decisions. The Puttaswamy

judgement specifically talks about how privacy postulates a bundle of entitlements and interests that include

anonymity. A law which encroaches upon privacy will have to withstand the touchstone of permissible

restrictions on fundamental rights.

Regulations that comprehensively destroy the anonymity and secrecy of all our communications on social media

are not reasonable restrictions of that fundamental right. If the Kerala high court’s view that Internet access is a

fundamental right is correct, it also implies that the right cannot be conditioned upon acceptance of privacy-

invading regulatory limitations, such as requiring accounts to be associated with Aadhaar numbers. This will be

disproportionate and unreasonable.

Moreover, it is hardly appropriate to regard the platform companies, powerful as they are, as the sole source of

the problem of social media misuse. All of the world’s largest democracies (including Brazil and the United States

as well as India) have experienced unsettling transformations of political campaigning practices in the last half

decade. Political parties and other actors have adopted large-scale disinformation and influence campaigns based

around opaque social media messaging.

A recent global report on computational propaganda, published by Oxford University researchers, shows the

comparative sophistication and intensity of governments to shape and control public opinion by these means.

Treating the problem of social media misuse as though it were primarily a problem of private defamation, that

can be fully resolved by regulating the platform companies, ignores the much larger problems that are caused by

governments, political parties and their supporters. These can only be remedied by strengthening individual rights

and limiting governmental power, not by the reverse.

The problems we face are as complex as the changes our technology has wrought. There are no simple answers

or quick fixes. We can sympathise with the frustration of Justice Gupta with his smartphone. But impulsiveness

by courts and regulators will be self-defeating. It will not solve our problems. It will only add another layer to the

triumph of outrage over deliberation that is social media’s most important negative contribution to democracy

in our time.

Courtesy: The Times of India (National)

1. Reckoning (noun): Meaning: The action or process of calculating or estimating something. (गणना, हिसाब-

हिताब)

Synonyms: Calculation, Estimate, Computation, Arithmetic

Example: By my reckoning, we should arrive in ten minutes.

2. Ill-considered (adjective): Meaning: Badly thought out. (अदूरदर्शी, अहििेिी)

Synonyms: Injudicious, Imprudent, Ill-Conceived, Misjudged

Antonyms: Shrewd, Sensible, Farsighted, Astute

Example: Large corporations are rushing ahead with ill-considered techniques.

3. Call forth (verb): Meaning: To cause (something) to come into action or existence. (जाग्रत िरना)

Synonyms: Evoke, Arouse, Summon, Prompt

Antonyms: Prevent, Suppress, Inhibit, Preclude

Example: His gameplay called forth admiration from all the people present.

4. Devise (verb): Meaning: To invent a plan, system, object, etc., usually using your intelligence or imagination.

(ईजाद िरना, उपाय िरना)

Synonyms: Invent, Concoct, Formulate, Frame, Fabricate

Antonyms: Copy, Borrow, Reproduce, Imitate

Example: He's good at devising language games that you can play with students in class.

5. Infringe (verb): Meaning: actively break the terms of (a law, agreement, etc.). (उलं्लघन िरना)

Synonyms: Contravene, Transgress, Defy, Flout

Antonyms: Obey, Observe, Conform, Comply With

Example: He occasionally infringe the law by parking near a junction.

6. Disinformation (noun): Meaning: False information spread in order to deceive people. (झठू, दुष्प्रचार)

Synonyms: Falsehood, Propaganda, Untruth, Mendacity

Antonyms: Veracity, Reality, Legitimacy, Non-Fiction

Example: They spread disinformation in order to discredit politicians.

7. Ail (verb): Meaning: To cause difficulty and problems for someone or something. (परेर्शान िरना)

Synonyms: Bother, Afflict, Bedevil, Beset

Antonyms: Aid, Abet, Facilitate, Support

Example: The government seems to have no understanding of what ails the country.

8. Tempt (verb): Meaning: To make someone want to have or do something, especially something that is

unnecessary or wrong. (लुभाना; राजी िरना)

Synonyms: Convince, Entice, Inveigle, Coax

Antonyms: Deter, Dissuade, Put Off, Dehort

Example: The offer of free food tempted her into cheating on her diet.

9. Impulse (Noun): Meaning: A sudden strong and unreflective urge or desire to act. (आिेग, तीव्र इच्छा)

Synonyms: Urge, Instinct, Drive, Caprice, Whim

Antonyms: Aversion, Repulsion, Disinclination, Repugnance

Example: I couldn’t resist the impulse to laugh.

10. Laudable (adjective): Meaning: (of an action, idea, or aim) deserving praise and commendation. (प्ररं्शसनीय)

Synonyms: Praiseworthy, Commendable, Exemplary, Creditable

Antonyms: Blameworthy, Culpable, Deplorable, Despicable

Example: His noble ideas and polite behaviour are laudable.