⚠️This Device is ‘Not Private’

Do you know, the UP government in name of distributing mobiles and tablets to students of the state is building a structure of surveillance and control?

Students who were distributed mobiles phones by Yogi Adityanath government found out a warning on their devices saying, “This device is not private”. The students remained confused as to what was happening. In reality, in the name of giving gadgets to students, Yogi government wants to create a structure of surveillance and control. To achieve this, they configured all the phones/tablets to give all the data to the government and no permissions to the owners to change the settings.

The Pegasus spyware scandal clearly exposed how BJP government at Centre and States cares little of privacy of its citizens. In the Pegasus case, those people who are critical of the government were targeted and were under surveillance. In the case of Bhima Koregaon case, reports have emerged that, those activists arrested in the case had their phones target by Pegasus and alleged evidence was planted in their phones. It is in this context we need to understand what the BJP government in UP is doing with student recipients of digital gadget.

It has come to the notice of AISA through several IT experts writing on social media, that UPDESCO which has configured the devices, is violently breaching the privacy of recipients. The users can not deny permissions to access of their data, activities, location, and other specifics which they may not want to share. Through their IT admin UPDESCO, the government has full access to the students’ data usage, call history, browsing history, applications, device location as well as corporate details. The government in this forced way, also controls security features and restrictions over many other features of the devices. Since each device is associated with the particulars of the recipients, this means that the government intends to access the information of behaviour patterns of each one of the intended 1 crore students who will receive these devices.

With no data protection mechanism in place presently, data thefts and leaks are a common phenomena. We have seen in the past how AADHAR details and other data collected by the government are leaked or compromised to security breaches thereby making their way to black market and hands of private players. Without any data protection law, there are serious concerns about the government role in people’s data security and giving access to companies use the copious amounts of data as witnessed in Arogya Setu case. Thus, the recipients of these mobiles/tablets face the very real and grave threat of their data being monitored by government, stolen and used by companies.

Data Protection Bill, 2021 also makes it easy for the government, to completely avoid the jurisdiction of a data protection law and thus legalises unwanted monitoring and control. The Bill also makes no progress towards surveillance reforms and does not regulate India’s surveillance regime. It is thus clear that the BJP government prefers the policy of surveillance over fundamental right to privacy.

It is important for Yogi led BJP government to remember that distributing mobile phones to the youth does not mean that the fundamental rights of freedom and privacy will be snatched away. No-one gives the government the right to know and control what any person sees or does with their device. Breach of privacy and control over behaviour of students is completely unacceptable.

AISA demands the configuration of surveillance and control be immediately removed. The privacy violation of recipient students will not be tolerated.

AISA strongly opposes the BJP governments’ policy of surveillance and control.