Is the Indian leadership technologically competent?

Short Answer? No! Had the Cambridge Analytica incident not occurred, we probably would not have noticed how insufficient our leaders’ understanding of modern day cyber warfare is. The Law Minister of the country Ravi Shankar Prasad claimed that the government could ask Mark Zuckerberg to appear before a court in India. Turns out, he cannot. Why? We will get to that in a minute.

Is the Indian cybersecurity infrastructure secure?

Short answer? Not at all. The Washington Post published an article on 4 January 2018, flaying the Indian cybersecurity set up. The article discussed how journalists from the Tribune newspaper were able to secure personal information of Indian citizens such as their names, address, and contact details for a meagre sum of USD 8, and for another USD 5, the guy was ready to print them a fresh set of Aadhaar Cards. Concerns over the security of data provided by Indian citizens for Aadhaar cards have been rising since its inception in 2009. The Attorney General of India, KK Venugopal tried convincing the Supreme Court by saying the data was “secure behind five feet thick concrete walls.” While the sturdiness of the walls cannot be questioned, it is highly unlikely to play a role in case of a data breach, a hack, or an internally orchestrated leak. Walls do not matter in cyber warfare.

Does India have the legal framework to bring potential cyber-criminals such as Cambridge Analytica to book, if need be?

The answer, once again, is an emphatic NO. Most of the cyber issues fall under the scope of IT Act of 2000. Considering the case in point, where Facebook reportedly provided data on private US citizens (50 million of them at least) to Cambridge Analytica, however indirectly, were used for psychographic profiling. The process is, in simple words, a micro-targeting tactic used in political campaigns to identify the digital behaviour of users. The digital behaviour gives an insight into the concerned person’s real-time behavioral aspects, such as their political ideologies, conscientiousness, favourite words, gullibility, likeliness to buy certain products etc.

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Is India ‘Cyber Ready’? Cambridge Analytica Rage is a Wake-Up Call

Is India’s legal framework up to date with the potential threat of data breaches?

Ishan Garg

Updated: 31 Mar 2018, 12:19 PM IST

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‘Weakening of democracy’, ‘media whirlpool’ and ‘millions of Facebook users conned’ are three phrases that pretty much sum up the discussion around Cambridge Analytica and the alleged data theft from Facebook.

Living in the 21st century, where the new developments in tech come exponentially faster than they used to five or ten years ago, begs the question: Is our legal framework up to date with the potential threat?

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Topics: Mark Zuckerberg Cyber Security Indian Data Protection Laws

Published: 28 Mar 2018, 6:44 PM IST