 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. On August 20th, raids were conducted on the homes of human rights activists across India by the Pune Police, who claimed they had links with Maoists. Attempts were also made to arrest five of these activists, and these attempts were stated by various courts. Now these activists are under house arrest, and protests have broken out across the country. At the same time, certain issues have also come up after these incidents on digital safety and data protection. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Parkayastha, Editor-in-Chief NewsClick. Hello Prabir. Prabir, to start with, as we know, of almost all the activists who were raided and arrested. All their mobile phones and their computers were seized. And some of them, like Sudha Bharadwaj, have also said that there might be data tempering. How do you see the risks and possibilities here? I think there are two sets of issues that are involved. By the way, even those who have not been arrested, their computers, hard drives seem to have been seized. Satya Narayana in Flu, he said that his equipment has been seized. So we are talking about two sets of issues here. One is tampering. If you plant evidence later on, and then, of course, how do you protect as an individual against data, false data being planted on your equipment? And the second is, of course, what are the rights you have in protecting your privacy or data privacy against intrusive searches, which may go far beyond what is supposed to be the crime that you are accused of becoming committed. So there are two sets of issues here. The first set of issues, let's talk about the possibility of tampering. Now, this has come up based on a letter which the Pune police is claiming has been recovered from one of the person's computer, which claims that there is a assassination possibility, et cetera, et cetera. Now, apart from the outlandish nature of this accusation, it's also clear that the Pune police doesn't seem to have taken it that seriously, or the government of India, because the national NIA has not been involved in this. Even the state CID has not been involved in this. If it was such a serious issue as they're claiming to be, how come this has not happened? This is a question that I think a citizen is entitled to ask. But the question is, if you do plant electronic evidence, what is the protection that we have? Now, when a normal search and seizure takes place, the police makes a record of all the things being seized. So you know, if there's a difference of inventory between what has been seized and what the police finally produced, you have the protection that, hey, this is what I have signed. But here, when you seize a laptop and you can have terabytes of data on it, when you take a hard drive, it's a terabytes of data on it, how do the individuals protect themselves? Therefore, digital seizure has far more intrusive properties than a normal search and seizure in a house in which tangible evidence is actually taken into custody by the police. And I think this is becoming a gray area in law because I could have also information which is protected, it's professional information, my medical information, the whole bunch of things. And because this personal data, for instance, take my case, I have something called a Fitbit and it transfers all my health data onto the computer, say, or my Android phone. So this is not subject to search and seizure. But if the police get hold of all of this, of course, in this case, it doesn't really matter. But this whole bunch of such data, which is supposed to be private, then becomes open to the state authorities. I think this is what Sri Krishna commission's also its recommendations have been, that we need to create laws. And this is also another jurisdiction, this issue has come up, that digital search and seizure go far beyond normal search and seizure. And therefore, there has to be two sets of standards, one for normal search and seizure, and the second when you're talking digital search and seizure. And I think that we need to create, therefore, some basic, shall we say, protection for the individual against such kind of seizures. But the tampering issue also becomes, in a certain way, a similar kind. How do I protect my equipment from being tampered? Because backdated information being created on a file is not difficult for the police. How do you prevent that from happening? So I think that how do we protect the individual from such things is a very, very major issue and a very major cause of concern. We also know that police when pressed do violate laws. We have enough evidence of, shall we say, forced pressurization, beating up people in custody, forcing them to confess. And we have our jurisprudence is replete with such incidences. So how do you prevent digital invasion of this kind? I think the major issue that we have to worry about I think that we need to look now very seriously at laws because without that, we are really, we have no protection. Once your phone and your computer gets seized, lots of evidence can be planted and there does not seem to be any electronic or legal protection against it. It's very difficult for police to present this evidence credibly and at the same time it's very difficult for us to credibly say this is not ours. And even if you're able to actually prove it by that time, the narrative is already created and then it becomes... That of course is a separate one as we're seeing right now that the narrative is being created and we do not know that how such a flimsy letter which is on the face of it, reading it doesn't seem to be credible. And even if it's supposedly a concocted letter or it's even a letter that somebody wrote in order to implicate them before the search and seizure took place, all of these are conjectures now, we don't know. And I don't think either side will be able to prove that it did or didn't happen. And I think that's the problem with this digital issues that we are facing. It allows the police to set the narrative without having to prove it. Exactly. And another key question is also with regard to passwords for instance. I think Sudha Bharadwaj's daughter also mentioned that they were forced to give all their passwords for Facebook, Twitter, other social media as well. And there's also very dangerous trend because it goes far beyond just the individual actually. You know, that's the other part. There are two sets of issues again here. One is that your, if for instance, there is a warrant for ceasing your personal equipment, et cetera. The question is a lot of this data is not on the computer. It's supposedly on the cloud, which means it's a separate service for which no search and seizure warrants have been issued. So your password, forcing you to give your password is essentially ceasing the data which is not resident on your equipment. Now that again brings up the issue. Can you be forced to give up your passwords? Is it like incriminating yourself? Again, I think under current law, there is this problem that it does not define clearly. What is the extent of information we can hold secret? And if we are forced to give up our password, should there be a separate search and seizure of shall we say our cloud records which the court has to then issue or the police might have to issue or the court might have to issue whatever the legal procedure is. But it must be the magistrates, orders of search and seizure should not take automatically, extend automatically to also social media accounts. The second part of it, and I think that's also important, is a lot of this data is of our personal data. It's communication which can be in a group who owns this data and therefore can any person be asked to give this information which belongs to the group as such and give it because it's, we are supposed to give our personal property up for search and seizure. What happens to which personal property? It's not personal property, but it's property of other people as well. I think these are again gray areas. What it does bring out is with the digital communications that we now have, there's a need to look very seriously at the law itself. And how do you protect us, the people, other people against the invasion of the state of our rights? And how do we also create digital rights? I think because there are new issues that are coming up which are not adequately covered under law. And I think that's something we have to look again, particularly in the light of what we now see that Srikram Krishna commission's report, I think we should be examined very carefully with respect to what he has advised, what he has said or not said and how these issues then come up with respect to his recommendations. I do think he has, for what reading, I remember of Srikram Krishna commission's report, it does appear that he has made certain recommendations, but I don't think they're fleshed out adequately at this point for us to see how they play out with respect to what we have seen in this particular case that you have talked about. And also I suspect there are a lot of the current discourse on this issue deals with individuals as users and consumers, but does not really look into the risks when the state is actually persecuting people who are fighting against it or human rights activists are struggling against it. So that section actually is actually even less fleshed out than your normal average user or customer for that matter. Yes, and I think also that a lot of this data doesn't really belong to a particular individual. So essentially what you do is by trying to take over this data, you can without search and seizure of others, you are actually seizing other people's data because we always held that it's the digital data that we are talking about, email to social media and so on, it's not individual data. It's really data which is collectively the data of a group of people. But I would call the data of the social network. If you remember social network is what Facebook called itself. This is really the data of the network. Who does it belong to? Should have this tie on under what condition state? Should have the right to see it or not see it? Is a different question from opening a letter which is really written to people. So I think that is something which we have to think about because this allows people to create in the state to create narratives which just by association A is guilty of X and all the people in contact is also guilty of X. It's the kind of social narrative that you can build using this kind of network data, shall we say. So I think yes, it does expose us to much greater risks. I don't think the risks at the end of it will stand up in the court of law by the way. I think that the Pune Police, for instance, in this case, whatever they're arguing, if it had any touch with reality, it would have been a much bigger issue. As I said, the NIA would have been involved. Other investigative agencies would have been involved. At least the documents would have been better drafted. They have been sort of called into question by all the courts. So all of this indicates that I don't think that they will really stand up in a court of law. Real issue is not the court of law. Real issue is the court of public opinion where these are being used or shall be misused by channels which are being increasingly called troll TV. And I think that it's at that bench or that bar that we will have to sort of arena ourselves. And I'm hoping that increasingly, this is going to fail there too. Thank you, Prabir. That's all we have time for a news click today. Keep watching.