By Fr Joshan Rodrigues –
Recent battlelines drawn between social media giants and the Indian government have sharply brought into focus freedom of speech and privacy concerns.
“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Mt 6:6). In the Christian spiritual tradition (in fact, in most world religions), the place to find God is in silence and solitude, away from the distracting presence of the world. The Gospels enumerate how Jesus habitually pulled Himself away from His disciples and the crowd, and retreated to a lonely place, so that He could be ‘alone’ with His heavenly Father. Hence, while ‘prayer’ is an intensely ‘private’ activity (except for public community worship which is also an important dimension of the Christian faith), a Christian is never alone, because God knows and sees all that you do in secret. Hence, while we can command privacy from other human beings, the concept of ‘privacy’ disappears when it comes to our relationship with God. Nothing is hidden from God.
‘Privacy’ and ‘Social Media’, at least to my mind, are terms in contradiction. The very nature of social media is to connect with one another through the sharing of information which we willingly upload to these platforms ourselves. We ‘want’ people to find us, ‘like’ us and comment on what’s happening in our lives. It is we who willingly upload photographs to social media platforms, express our likes and dislikes, manifest our political and social preferences, put out information about which schools and colleges we went to, announce to the world that we are now engaged, married or had our first baby, enter our birthdates so that people may be reminded to wish us. How many of us look to Facebook Events to remember who is celebrating their birthday today?
And yet, we expect that the information we upload will not be used by these social media giants to generate profit through targeted advertising…while we don’t pay a single rupee for the usage of these services! It must be remembered that Facebook, Instagram, Google, WhatsApp, Twitter are not charitable organisations looking to bring humanity together. While connecting people may well be their foundational principle, these companies are – at the end of the day – businesses. They need to make money, provide profits to their owners and investors, and pay the thousands of people they employ around the globe.
A popular adage in the digital world says, “If you don’t pay for the product, YOU are the product.” What that means is that when we utilise a service for free, our personal data is the price we pay to these companies, which in turn is sold to advertisers for considerable profits. Data has well and truly become the new oil, the gold of the modern, digital society. Data brings power, influence, control and profit. Not just the corporate world, but political parties too have realised the power of vast swathes of data on the electorate, which today is key to targeting a particular demographic or constituency. A political party’s digital outreach power quite often becomes the deciding factor between winning and losing elections.
This brings us to the present day clash we are witnessing between social media companies and governments, not just in India, but around the world. Governments seek to control the flow of information and mitigate criticism against government actors, while social media companies eagerly want to push back on any outside control on the data they collect and command. The Government of India notified new IT Rules in February this year, which compels social media giants to become more accountable to the law of the land by appointing compliance and grievance redressal officers, as also the obligation to ensure ‘traceability’ of messages or content to identify the originator of that particular post, if required by a court or a competent authority, under Section 69 of the Information Technology Act.
Platforms such as WhatsApp contend that this goes directly against end-to-end encryption, where only communicating users can access messages that they send and receive. While the government has argued that the rule is necessary to prevent misuse of social media and curb fake news, and will be applied only in areas concerning national security, public order, crimes against women and children, etc., WhatsApp contends that tweaking encryption will leave users vulnerable to privacy violations, hacking, online impersonation and stealing of digital information.
It must be said, though, that neither social media companies nor governments have the best interest of the public at large. While social media companies need to be reined in and obligated to use the vast amount of data that they possess in a responsible and transparent way, in accordance with the law of the land, most advocates for Internet freedom and privacy rights point out that recent cases of government overreach demonstrate how journalists, social and civil rights activists and political opponents are usually targeted by the devious application of these laws. The blatant and un-restricted application of the sedition law has alarmed even the Supreme Court, which has now committed itself to defining the parameters of this term, especially when it comes to media and journalism professionals.
Mishi Choudhary, Legal Director at the Software Freedom Law Centre, a legal services organisation, says that there exists a “trust deficit” with the government. “The NSO revelations of government spying on activists, the constant meddling in shaping the narrative, the suppression of political dissent and arm-twisting of social media companies, weaponisation of social media by political parties, online harassment have all created a trust deficit that even genuine efforts at regulation raise suspicion,” Choudhary told The Print. Unlocking encryption on public conversations, will lead to a de facto surveillance by government agencies. “Big Brother is watching” – a term popularized by George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’, describing a dystopian surveillance society of the future – will rapidly become a present day reality.
Social media companies, on the other hand, have also cooked their own goose, so to speak, by switching between ‘content aggregator’ and ‘platform censor’ as it suits them. While on the one hand, they argue that they are not responsible for the content that is posted on their platforms and they are merely providing the space to do so, the fact that they censor content, and decide who should be there or not on their platforms, what content is ‘true’, ‘false’ or ‘manipulative’ and appear to tilt towards certain political ideologies, firmly brings them within the ambit of an ‘editorial platform’ which then makes them responsible for the content that they allow through their gateways.
So, is privacy even possible in such a digitally complex world?
I would have to say that absolute privacy is a myth; rather, what needs to be spoken of is degrees of privacy available to the public. Social media companies should give users legitimate control over how much of their information can be shared for advertising purposes. The choice offered at the moment to ‘I agree’ or ‘I disagree’ is just an illusion; if you do not agree to their terms, you are not allowed to use their service. This is not really a choice at all.
Users, on the other hand, must also wake up to the reality of paying for services, if they expect a user-centric service, where their information is safe. Opt for paid platforms, apps and services if you are paranoid about protecting your information. Commercial entities, corporations and businesses seldom use free services because they need to protect their data and the data of their customers. Before the advent of mass digital messaging, we communicated with one another primarily through phone calls and letters/postcards. We paid a tiny amount for this service to the phone company and to the postal office, but it ensured that our messages reached their destination. Today, we expect to be able to communicate for free, and offer nothing in return. Surely, there is a price to pay, however small.
When it comes to government, while social media companies should be made to abide by the local law of the land that has the welfare of its citizens at heart, application and oversight of these laws should be placed in the hands of neutral and independent bodies free of government control and monitored by the judiciary. That is the only way we can ensure that the law is not misused by the powers that be.
Fr Joshan Rodrigues is currently the Manager Editor of The Examiner, Catholic Newsweekly of the Archdiocese of Bombay. He is an alumnus of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome in institutional and Social Communications. He has done brief stints with the DeSales Media Group in Brooklyn, New York and Communications Office of the Episcopal Conference of England and Wales, London. He frequently blogs on faith and culture in ‘Musings in Catholic Land‘
Nicely written.