Hello from India.
If there is one word to characterize the environment around me right now, it is "hot." The reference is not restricted to the current heat wave in India, where parts of the country are experiencing temperatures nearing 50 degrees Celsius. We're also in the "heat" of India's elections — which have been at the center of activity this last month.
Talking of elections, not surprisingly, the misuse of technology has been a key narrative.
The use and misuse of deepfakes in the election — across the political spectrum — has garnered significant media attention. So much so that it prompted a statement from the Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology Shri Krishnan.
During a Q&A session at the AI Alliance Conference in Delhi 17 May, Krishnan talked about the possible inclusion of deepfakes in the upcoming Digital India Act, which is set to replace the decades-old Information Technology Act, 2000, an "umbrella" law that covers a vast spectrum from digital signatures to cybercrimes.
The other narrative that stands out for me has been around the role — and, therefore, influence — of tech platforms and apps in the elections.
MeitY was accused of misusing taxpayer money for rolling out a WhatsApp campaign comprising a letter from the prime minister to a vast swathe of individuals. The Election Commission of India ordered MeitY to halt the campaign, allegedly done using WhatsApp's business API, calling it a violation of the Model Code of Conduct. MeitY countered this claiming the campaign was carried out before the MCC officially kicked in.
Another case involved the Telugu Desam Party's use of WeApp. Used by party workers and affiliates, the app enables aggregation of voters' personal data, including political affiliations, voter ID numbers and booth numbers. A rival party, the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party complained to the Election Commission alleging the TDP, a regional political party in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, used this for voter profiling and bribing by offering monetary benefits to individuals in exchange for their votes.
Meanwhile, the data juggernaut that is India trundles on with various incidents and interesting cases going to the courts — some on account of the lack of specific laws addressing technology-generated matters.
In one interesting case that caught my eye, smartphone location tracking of a bail grantee once again came up. This time, the High Court of the northern states of Punjab and Haryana directed a murder convict to "own and possess" a smartphone and share their location with local police.
This contradicts an earlier remark from the Supreme Court that specifically stated sharing live location with law enforcement is not a bail condition. In the Supreme Court case, the person was being asked to share his Google PIN.
Such cases have privacy activists sounding alarm about law enforcement agency's increasing surveillance tactics violating the fundamental right to privacy that Indians enjoy.
We have also seen celebrities approach the courts to order a stay on AI-based actions that misuse or use what is rightfully theirs in an unauthorized manner.
The latest is well-known actor Jackie Shroff, who recently filed a lawsuit before the Delhi High Court regarding social media platforms and AI applications' unauthorized use of his name, voice, image and other attributes to create offensive and defamatory content, memes and for other malicious purposes.
Last year, the Delhi High Court issued an interim order in favor of another leading actor Anil Kapoor for a similar complaint, as well as a November 2022 order in favor of actor Amitabh Bachchan.
Interestingly, Shroff's latest case discusses the concept of "personality rights," which it describes as covering all facets of his personality over which he enjoys total control and which cannot be utilized for commercial purposes or misappropriated in any other way without his permission. This has been developed from the Fundamental Right to Privacy as well as the Copyright Act.
Among recent incidents of interest, beyond the alarming and continued incidents around data leakage, one that caught my particular attention was a statement by Computer Age Management Services Limited Managing Director Anuj Kumar. CAMS is one of the largest mutual fund transfer and processing agencies in India that also provides account aggregator services.
In a news article, Kumar talked of new technology that could analyze transactions done via CAMS's account aggregator platform revealing, for example, types of purchases made, which could be shared further. "Frequent Rs. 16 transactions indicate cigarette purchases, information which we can share with insurance companies," Kumar said.
Predictably, this kicked off a storm on social media around privacy concerns as well as fundamental questions on the implementation of the account aggregator model, which does not permit aggregators to store data at their end. This, to me, is yet another illustration of how implementation of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act in India is acutely urgent.
As always, I wrap up with some statistics of note in the last month, this time centered around marketing and technology.
The Advertising Standards Council of India — a body tasked with developing and ensuring compliance with standards in the advertising space — published its Annual Complaints Report 2023-24[SN1] .
Digital ads accounted for 85% of the total ads examined by ASCI for violating advertising standards. The compliance rate for digital ads was far lower — at 75% compliance — than print and TV ads, which were at 97% compliance.
While the violations analyzed centered around misleading content and influencer disclosure violations — the ministry of consumer affairs has laid down specific guidelines for influencers in 2023 — they basically focus on breach of trust of individuals online.
With the DPDPA coming into force, I am sure violations around the massive ongoing tracking and profiling of individuals without consent would also be added to this report, further muddying the already concern-worthy numbers.
Salesforce's State of Marketing Report shared interesting insights from over 4,800 marketing leaders across 29 countries, including India. Worth noting, 66% of marketers in India have access to real-time customer data to execute a campaign and use an average of 9 different tactics to collect data.
Marketers in India are looking to AI — both generative and predictive — to help "personalize at scale" and say improving use of tools and technologies is their number one priority, while building and retaining trust with customers is their number one challenge.
As I read these statistics and trends, I kept wondering, what if these actions are not governed by data privacy and other laws and regulations? What happens to us, the consumers — most of whom are blissfully unaware of all that goes on in the background?
Only time will tell.
