The Lift Line
“Until India’s privacy debate catches up to that reality, every right it wins will only ever be half a win.”
Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam
Pankhuri Agarwal, a lecturer at King’s Business School, King’s College London, connects three stories that most answers treat separately: police facial recognition, online doxxing and electoral-roll verification. The piece gives a structure for questions on privacy, surveillance, data protection and technology and ethics.
GS Paper 2: Fundamental rights; government policies. GS Paper 3: Challenges to internal security through communication networks; cyber security. GS Paper 4: Ethics in public administration; privacy and dignity.
Background and Context
The three stories the author connects, as she describes them.
| Story | What the column says |
|---|---|
| Facial recognition | In July 2026, Rajya Sabha member A.A. Rahim petitioned the Supreme Court against the Delhi Police’s use of facial recognition, AI-enabled smart glasses, drones and a mobile command vehicle at protests at Jantar Mantar; the data was allegedly hosted by two private firms |
| Doxxing | Women who joined the protests were later targeted online with their personal details and rape and death threats. Separately, in August 2026, the Supreme Court disposed of a PIL on doxxing and deepfakes, asking Union Ministries to take remedial measures |
| Electoral rolls | The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) checks identity to decide who stays on the roll; Bihar’s roll went from about 7.89 crore electors to a final 7.42 crore |
The law.
| Instrument | Relevance |
|---|---|
| K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) | Nine judges: privacy is a fundamental right under Article 21; limits must pass legality, legitimate aim, proportionality |
| Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, Section 17 | The Union may exempt any state instrumentality in the interests of sovereignty, security, public order and related grounds |
| Pegasus (Manohar Lal Sharma v. Union of India) | Court-appointed technical committee (supervised by Justice R.V. Raveendran) found malware on some phones in 2022 but could not confirm it was Pegasus, and recorded the Union’s non-cooperation |
| Lucknow hoardings (March 2020) | The Allahabad High Court ordered removal of hoardings naming anti-CAA protesters, calling them an “unwarranted interference in privacy” |
A long history. In 1858, William Herschel, a magistrate in Bengal, began taking handprints on contracts; fingerprint classification was later developed in Bengal by Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose under Edward Henry (the Henry system, 1897).
The Analysis
1. Three kinds of watching. The state watches in public (cameras); crowds watch and punish online (doxxing); bureaucracy watches through identity checks (rolls). Each decides who is counted, believed or safe.
2. The burden is uneven. Minorities, migrants, Dalits, Adivasis, women and the poor bear most of the cost.
3. The law protects one link. Puttaswamy is framed around state action; the DPDP Act lets the state exempt itself; private vendors and anonymous accounts sit outside a single framework. A person’s data “passes through other hands beyond it”.
4. Scale and speed are new. The impulse to make people identifiable is old; what has changed is that “a photo can be uploaded, identified, amplified and linked to an address within hours”.
5. A new starting point. Treat surveillance not as a discrete act by one actor against one person, but as diffuse action by states, companies and foreign vendors at once.
Data and Institutions Vault
Prelims-grade facts:
Privacy law:
- Puttaswamy (2017): nine-judge Bench; privacy part of Article 21; overruled M.P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1962) to that extent.
- DPDP Act, 2023: Section 17 exemptions; Data Protection Board of India adjudicates.
- IT Act, 2000, Section 69: interception, monitoring and decryption by the government.
Pegasus:
- Technical committee supervised by Justice R.V. Raveendran; report 2022.
History of identification:
- 1858: Herschel’s handprints; 1897: Henry system of fingerprint classification adopted in Bengal.
⚠️ Watch the trap: Puttaswamy (2017) is the privacy judgment; the Aadhaar judgment of 2018 is also titled K.S. Puttaswamy (a five-judge Bench) and upheld Aadhaar with limits.
The Debate
For the author’s view. Data now flows from state cameras to private servers to public networks. A framework that polices only one link leaves the person exposed at every other.
The complications. Facial recognition and data analytics help police identify offenders and find missing children; clean electoral rolls are a constitutional duty; security exemptions exist in most data laws. The Supreme Court has also held that the Election Commission may examine citizenship for the limited purpose of the rolls.
The balanced verdict. Keep the tools but build the safeguards: a law on state surveillance with independent authorisation and audits; duties on vendors; narrow, reasoned DPDP exemptions; and quick remedies for doxxing and deepfakes.
How to Think About This
Follow the data, not the actor. For any privacy question, trace where the information goes: who collects it, who stores it, who can see it, who can spread it. Then ask which law governs each step. The gaps usually appear at the hand-offs.
Diagram-in-Words
Takeaway Box
- Thesis: surveillance is a chain, not a single act.
- Links: police cameras, private vendors, online doxxing, identity checks for rolls.
- Law: Puttaswamy (2017) is state-focused; DPDP Section 17 allows state exemptions.
- Precedent: Lucknow hoardings (2020) struck as “unwarranted interference in privacy”.
- Reform: surveillance law, vendor duties, narrow exemptions, fast remedies.
Sources: The Hindu, Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (MeitY), Supreme Court of India
Source: Surveillance Is Not the Only Privacy Issue: Cameras, Doxxing and Electoral Rolls as One Chain — Ujiyari.com | Free UPSC & State PCS Editorial Analysis
