The Pegasus Hack–II: Secrecy for Snooping in Public Procurement?
By Gunjan Chawla
The recent revelation of the Pegasus hacks has re-ignited public discourse on privacy, surveillance, and intelligence reform. As the proposed Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 makes wide exemptions to military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies for the collection and processing of citizens’ data, data protection laws in their current form will be limited in their potential to enforce meaningful procedural safeguards and oversight of State surveillance.
Although these conversations are not new, we must continue to have them. At the same time, it is important not to miss the forest of State-run cyber-surveillance programmes for the sprawling branches of the Pegasus tree. That the global cyber-surveillance industry thrives on State secrecy – is no secret.
Rakesh Maheshwari, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology
Key references
The Information Technology Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment), 2018 [download]
IT Rules 2011 [read]
Shreya Singhal Judgment: [read]
Summary of the IT Rules
Intermediaries And Social Media Platforms [read]
Digital News Publishing [read]
OTT Streaming Services [read]
Key developments
Unblocking of handles: IT Ministry notice to Twitter warns of consequences [Read]
CEO Will Cathcart says WhatsApp hopes to find solution to traceability without breaking encryption [read]
India’s FOSS community files plea in Kerala High Court against IT Rules, challenges traceability mandate [read]
Opinion/Analysis Pieces
The Case of the Online Intermediary by Chinmayi Arun [Read]
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