With the unfolding of the Facebook data leak scandal, big tech companies are currently facing a huge backlash. London-based Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, is under the scanner for extracting data of more than 50 million Facebook users – one of the biggest data leaks in the history of social networking. The company’s aim was to identify what triggered voting choices of people and to accordingly tailor the election campaign for its client, the Trump camp. The rising importance of social media in our lives has lured corporations and the government to acquire big data any which way.
Digital platforms, irrespective of regulatory checks and balances and policies have become the inescapable reality of our life. In the instant case, Cambridge based psychologist-cum-data scientist, Aleksandr Kogan, created an app that enabled the company to harvest personal details of millions of Facebook users and the same harvested data is believed to have played a major role in the Leave campaign for Brexit, and later in digital operations during Donald Trump’s election campaign. The said app, through a personality quiz, clandestinely collected users’ data such as tastes, preferences and political leanings.
India is the third largest country in terms of internet users in the world with a huge social networking audience. The average internet user is bombarded regularly with so many advertisements, including candidates contesting elections. Millions of people the world over spend lakhs of hours in cyberspace. It has become a way of life linked to daily routines, thought processes, desires, fears, wishes and concerns. But there is a potential danger of misuse of our personal information at the hands of unscrupulous corporates such as companies of Kogan.
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There are media reports that India has become a hunting ground for Cambridge Analytica, what with the 2019 general election fast approaching. It is well known to such firms that political opinions are often deeply influenced by emotions and intuition. In recent years, India has witnessed growing influence of social media in shaping political opinion. Political leaders and government officials the world over have expressed concern about this mode of data harvesting and its power to influence people. After US, UK, Australia, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, India is likely to be caught in an episode such as the Cambridge Analytica fiasco.
Winning elections is big business. Consultants, fixers, deal-makers, lobbyists and middlemen have always been part of our political landscape, but what is new is the power of technology to influence the hearts and minds of voters. Now marketing professionals, media managers and data analysts have joined political psychologists, psephologists, analysts, journalists and expert commentators to shape the winning trend. Though money, media and manipulation have always played a huge role in results of elections in India, unpredictability has remained a hallmark of Indian democracy. Rigging an election by using new technologies, or through the so-called psychographic mapping, is not easy, considering such a diverse and complex population.
Information theft and illegal snooping is a disturbing trend that is likely to distort and destroy the Indian democracy. With 2.2 billion active users of Facebook worldwide at the end of 2017, the vulnerability of privacy and security is inescapable. Many news items and opinions on social media are Balkanized, self-serving and fake but have the strength to form the wrong opinion. Regulatory teeth and security protocols often fail to use their biting force. The security protocol of the Facebook should have been triggered to catch data theft at the behest of unscrupulous people such as Kogan, but it could not. The reports also speak volumes about the lack of accountability shown by Facebook in protecting its users and its unwillingness to disclose the platforms wherefrom the data has been stolen.
The Facebook data leak has highlighted the issues of security, privacy and an undercurrent of worries among citizens from myriad perspectives. It cries for new regulatory principles to tame such risks in future. Though most tech companies dislike government interference in their affairs, and follow a policy of proactive self-regulation, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, sounded as if he was in favour of government regulation. But the moot question is how can anybody prevent data leakage? The international reach of the internet makes tech companies an enormous challenge for any individual regulator to tackle. But that does not mean tech companies cannot be regulated – they need to be brought under a complex web of laws and regulations, varying based on industry and local authority.
Given exponential growth of the data economy, we need far-sighted laws on privacy and security to avoid nefarious perversion. India has a unique opportunity to create a truly forward-thinking privacy law. Granting the government more power to view and make decisions about citizens’ private personal data, especially when the use of that data could be changed at the whims of the executive regime, could also further blur the lines between private and public life. There is an urgent need to iron out the accountability deficit, since platforms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter can rapidly disseminate misinformation and allow bad actors to manipulate information. Laudatory efforts need to be launched to compel tech companies to explain how they intend to use personal data they collect, which will automatically give citizens greater power to restrict the manipulation of date for commercial use. In the Indian context, the need of the hour is to create an all-powerful data protection authority taking into account our own values and traditions so that rogue tech companies cannot befool citizens.
The writer is a Supreme Court advocate.
