The Vulnerable Indian

The civil liberties and legal protections of the ordinary Indian citizen are in alarming retreat today. The internet and our new digital way of life have opened new battle frontiers. And targeted misinformation, spread via popular internet platforms, by both state and non-state actors, has multiplied this threat manifold. The essays that follow map the many dimensions of this vulnerability, some already exposed and in plain view, others lurking round the corner

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Weaponising Data, the New Oil

CITIZEN DATA IS POTENTIALLY WORTH A LOT TO POLITICAL PARTIES AND RULING GOVERNMENTS. WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE RIGHT ALGORITHMS, DATA CAN HELP GAME DEMOCRACIES

By Prasanto K. Roy

PEGASUS, THE ICONIC WHITE winged horse of Greek mythology, was almost unknown in India. That name has suddenly become famous, as a piece of crafty spyware that snooped on Indian citizens.

On November 1, the Indian Express reported that the Israeli spyware Pegasus was used to snoop on at least two dozen Indian journalists, activists and others, via their phones. WhatsApp and its parent Facebook were suing the spyware’s creator NSO Group Technologies of Israel in a federal court in California, for hacking 1,400 smartphones via WhatsApp servers. They had traced the source of an extraordinary cyberattack detected and blocked in May 2019, that targeted over 100 human-rights defenders, journalists and others across the world.

Wait, isn’t WhatsApp securely encrypted, end to end? Yes: others can’t snoop on a message en route to your phone. But on your handset, the message is decrypted for you to read. Spyware on your phone can intercept your display or keyboard, camera or mic, and listen to your calls, or to conversations in your room.