Gautam Bhatia Profile picture
Oct 3, 2020 7 tweets 2 min read Read on X
A quick note on phone tapping. It is, unfortunately, something that is left to the arbitrary discretion of the government, and at the root of this situation (unsurprisingly) is a bad Supreme Court judgment:

indiankanoon.org/doc/31276692/

(1/n)
In PUCL v Union (1997), it was argued that, given the serious privacy issues involved, phone tapping cannot take place without judicial authorisation. Unfortunately, the Court did not agree, and instead laid down some guidelines, for bureaucratic authorisation.

(2/n)
To be honest, given the way magistrates mechanically allow remand applications and higher courts deny bail where fundamental issues of liberty are involved, I'm no longer confident that that would have made any difference, but that's another debate.

(3/n)
When Srikrishna Committee on Data Protection was constituted a couple of years ago, people specifically made the point that data protection is pointless without surveillance reform, and that the Committee would end up indirectly legitimising surveillance through omission (4/n).
For reasons that I do not need to spell out, the Committee completely ignored these points, and that's one of the (many) reasons why the so-called Personal Data Protection Bill is an absolute eyewash. (5/n)
So what might genuine surveillance reform look like? An effort was made by a civil society initiative, culminating in the Indian Privacy Code, which set out detailed safeguards to prevent government from abusing surveillance powers:

saveourprivacy.in/bill

(6/n)
For more on these issues, follow @internetfreedom.

(8/8)

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More from @gautambhatia88

Mar 27
Reading this excellent book, which has a lot of resonance with present-day events.

Sharing some of the most striking paragraphs. Image
“Mau Mau had to be eliminated at all costs,” he later recalled, “something had to be done to remove these people from society.”

Thinking about where that kind of language has been used recently. Image
“He and his finance minister, Ernest Vasey, despaired that Mau Mau was not communist. Had it been, the British government would have given them a blank check to suppress the movement, as it had done with General Templar and the communist uprising in British colonial Malaya.” Image
Read 10 tweets
Mar 10
In light of recent events with respect to the Election Commission, there is persistent confusion about the constitutionality of the current selection process, and the Supreme Court's 2023 judgment on the appointment of Election Commissioners.

A brief thread. (1/n)
Article 324(2) of the Constitution grants to the President the power to appoint the Election Commissioners, subject to Parliamentary law.

The intention of the framers of the Constitution was that the President's power would be transitional, until Parliament made a law.

(2/n)
The text of Article 324(2) of the Constitution:

(3/n)indiankanoon.org/doc/950881/
Read 20 tweets
Aug 10, 2023
Have seen some confusion about the new Election Commissioners Bill, and what the SC held in its judgment earlier this year. Here is a brief thread to clear a few things up.

Earlier this year, a 5J-bench of the SC passed a detailed judgment on the independence of the EC. [1/n]
The SC was examining Article 324(2) of the Constitution, which says that appointment of the CEC and ECs shall "subject to the provisions of any law made in that behalf by Parliament, be made by the President."

Article 324: [2/n]indiankanoon.org/doc/950881/
Examining this provision in light of its context, its history, the debates in the Constituent Assembly, and the role of the EC, the Court found that the intention behind Article 324(2) had been that Parliament would soon pass a detailed law securing an *independent* EC. [3/n]
Read 20 tweets
Jul 12, 2023
#MilanKundera, who passed away today, was one of those formative writers in my life. Sharing a thread of some of the most memorable lines from his works, that I've scribbled in notebooks over the years. 🧵
"The dance whirling around them is no longer a dance but barricades yet again, we are in 1848, & in 1870, and in 1945, & we are in Paris, Warsaw, Budapest, Prague & Vienna, & these yet again are the eternal crowds crossing through history, leaping from one barricade to another."
"Ah, what naivete, he reflected, to believe in the existence of a song that never ends!"
Read 16 tweets
Mar 24, 2023
Today, the SC has given one of the worst and most damaging civil rights judgments in its history.

The 2011 judgment in Arup Bhuyan’s case was one of the only checks against executive abuse of the UAPA. Today, the SC has removed that check.
The judgment in Arup Bhuyan had understood the simple point that the word “membership” is so broad and vague that State can make completely baseless allegations and keep people in jail for years without trial. So they established a higher threshold. Now that protection is gone.
This judgment further entrenches the SC as the Executive Court of India, notwithstanding the protestations of an ex-CJI at the “conclave” last week: it is a court that acts as an extended arm of the executive, and not as a protector of civil rights.
Read 6 tweets
Mar 22, 2023
A care package from Lagos, courtesy @masobebooks and @Ohmstonweth.
Also, nice to hold in my hands at last, the blurbed copy.
A bonus. Remember editing an interview with TJ Benson back in 2017, for @strangehorizons’ 100 African Writers of SFF series.
Read 4 tweets

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