Privacy: The next frontier?

Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh at the Special Cell of the Delhi Police in connection with the telephone tapping issue, in New Delhi on January 13. - V. SUDERSHAN

As technology makes a citizen's privacy fragile, the state should be very careful when it decides to break into it.

How courteous is the Japanese; He always says, "Excuse it, please." He climbs into his neighbour's garden. And smiles, and says, "I beg your pardon;" He bows and grins a friendly grin, And calls his hungry family in; He grins, and bows a friendly bow; "So sorry, this my garden now."

- Ogden Nash

SOME recent events culminating in the allegations of phone-tapping made first by Amar Singh and then by a number of other public figures including the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa make Ogden Nash's little poem relevant in a rather roundabout way. Let us overlook, for the purposes of this essay, his nasty take on one of the world's most civilised people and consider instead the manner in which an individual's territory is taken over in the poem. Nash makes it out to be possible for this to be done gradually and most politely; the point here is not so much the takeover as the fact that the manner in which it is done precludes any determined attempt to counter it.

What we have been seeing - sting operations involving Members of Parliament and then these allegations of phone-tapping have a bizarre resemblance to the operation described by Nash; the tactics involved are based on the fact that the victims are unaware of just what is happening and thereby provide the predator or the operator with just what he or she was looking for - sometimes even more. Except that the argument that this is a blatant and unforgivable invasion of privacy falls on its face in the context of what the `victim' reveals, knowingly or unknowingly.

That, of course, is the difference between what has been happening and Nash's poem. The `Japanese' in the poem is taking over something that is not a matter of criminal action - it is some poor soul's home and territory. In the sting operations what was revealed, whether through a process of hoodwinking the MPs or in whatever manner, was dishonesty and an abuse of office, of the very procedures of Parliament. But what about the phone-tapping allegations? Can they be seen to be the same kind of thing?

That would depend, of course, on what the tapping revealed; if it was information that compromised the security of the state, or caused some harm to the national interest or not. We know that phone-tapping is almost as old as the telephone system itself; listening into private telephone conversations has been a well-established method of obtaining information that could jeopardise the security of the state or cause harm to the public interest. This is, in fact, a lawful activity, sanctioned by The Telegraph Act of 1885, duly amended. Subsequently, the Supreme Court held that it was a serious infringement of individual privacy and laid out guidelines for phone-tapping, which specified, among other things, that only the Home Secretary in the Government of India and his counterpart in the States could authorise such an act.

It could be argued, with considerable validity, that if the objectives are those that have been mentioned in the last paragraph, then phone-tapping is not merely lawful but essential in the national interest, and is no different from obtaining information through informants on a crime or an act of terrorism about to be committed. But that is not the point here. What is being offered for consideration is the act itself shorn of any objectives and circumstances. The stealthy intrusion into a person's privacy, which is made possible by technology.

Sting operations and phone-tapping are really a very small part of the whole story. An individual can now be spied upon by satellite, remote control cameras and high fidelity sound equipment that can pick up conversations in a room from outside. In other words, a person does not really have any privacy that he can be sure of. He can have his words recorded, his actions filmed and his writing copied. His life like the lives of everyone else can now be prised open, like a can of fruit.

But does that nightmare scenario exist? One report said that there were some three or four closed circuit cameras for every person in the United Kindgdom. That may be a wild exaggeration, but even if it is not, does that necessarily mean that there is no privacy left to individuals in the U.K.? Is everyone there under continual surveillance, so that his or her every act and word is actually public property?

The answer is, of course, no. True, the invasion of privacy is possible in a manner and to an extent that was unthinkable even a decade ago, thanks to the kind of sophisticated technology that now exists, but no state - no, not even India - is consequently moving into the private lives of its citizens. In fact, it could be said with some confidence that no one is really interested in doing that.

What is of concern, though, is that it does not necessarily follow that the intrusion into an individual's private life is always done in the national interest. It is, again, common knowledge that political opponents often have their private lives - actions and words - delivered to the party which is in power in a State or at the Centre, by agencies eager to please their masters. It is all very well to say that an order to tap a phone must be signed by no less than the Home Secretary; but there are Home Secretaries and Home Secretaries. Fewer and fewer will refuse to carry out the dictates of a political master.

And if it reveals nothing else, Amar Singh's phone tapping brouhaha reveals the dangers of having telecommunications controlled by private interests. Not that all of them are bent, but there may always be that element that will see this as a means of getting some kind of power, a means of blackmailing someone.

Which brings this to the essential point. All of this would be of no consequence if one had nothing to hide. Arthur Conan Doyle is said to have sent a telegram to ten of his friends which read: "Fly at once; all has been revealed." Eight of them left London immediately. Only those who have done something or wish to conceal something will be terribly agitated by the kind of violation of privacy that Amar Singh is so exercised about.

As a general principle it is indeed true that any violation of an individual's privacy is the violation of his fundamental rights; but that becomes a menace only if it is used for ends that are not in the national interest, and if there is indeed something that can be so used. If a person has nothing to hide, has done nothing he wishes to keep secret, it is still a violation of his individual rights if his privacy is invaded; but then that violation will stand out as a perfidious act, and the agency guilty of it will suffer a great deal of humiliation and public contempt, if nothing else.

Increasingly, the matter becomes a delicate tightrope act. One must keep one's affairs clear enough to be able to withstand public gaze, and the agencies violating personal privacy must be very sure that they are doing it for the larger public interest, not for the benefit of the ruling party or for later blackmail. Technology makes our privacy very fragile indeed; it is all the more necessary for the state to understand this and be very careful when it decides to break into it.