Mass Surveillance v. Privacy in Digital Age and the controversy surrounding Aarogya Setu

Abstract

In the current age of digital technology, for every new hurdle that humans are facing, technology to a large extent has been able to solve it. It has in fact gone beyond, to classify and predict failures that might arise. To be able to rightly do so, there is a lot of dependence on data and the growth of the digital space - e-commerce, personal assistant devices, and the likes – and growing modes of surveillance have been well catering this need. In fact, there is a case of data deluge and we seem to be landing in newer problems owing to the same. With the act of data collection comes the issue of consent and privacy, despite the numerous benefits that this data might cater. While several debates have sparked around the same, we still have little governance and fewer frameworks in place that help us strike the right balance. In our study, we attempt to highlight key factors that must be focussed on to understand the trade-offs between the benefits of surveillance and privacy in the field of public healthcare in India. The same may be applied to several other fields that involve a similar trade-off.