USA case Study:
- After the infamous revelation of the surveillance system of United States investigative agencies by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, people and scholars started to identify the ethical issues surrounding privacy, big data, and Governance.
- Further, after the US Presidential elections in 2016, this concern was alleviated by a controversy. Scholars have termed this kind of technology as persuasive technology. Digital panopticism is controlling and changing our behavioural patterns.
- Russian hackers targeted US voter rolls in several states as part of the Kremlin’s broader efforts to undermine the integrity of the 2016 elections, and since then, security researchers have discovered further breaches of data affecting 198 million Americans, 93 million Mexican, 55 million Filipino, and 50 million Turkish voters.
- In April 2018, Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg testified in two congressional hearings about his company’s role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which it was revealed that Facebook had exposed the data of up to 87 million users to political exploitation. The case was a reminder of how personal information is increasingly being employed to influence electoral outcomes.
- Recently, a popular magazine in the U.S. took a survey of how many would have objections to the idea of surveillance? If the survey result is to be believed, many had no problem if they are being monitored as they have nothing to hide from the government. Exactly, when there is nothing to hide and are true to oneself, the need for fear is gone.
Chinese Case Study:
- Disinformation and propaganda disseminated online have poisoned the public sphere. The unbridled collection of personal data has broken down traditional notions of privacy. And a cohort of countries is moving toward digital authoritarianism by embracing the Chinese model of extensive censorship and automated surveillance systems. As a result of these trends, global internet freedom declined for the eighth consecutive year in 2018.
- China’s surveillance is particularly suffocating in Xinjiang, where the authorities use mobile apps, biometric collection, artificial intelligence, and big data, among other means, to control 13 million Turkic Muslims.
India’s Case Study:
- Recently, a list of persons allegedly targeted by Pegasus spyware was released by a multi-organisational investigation involving news organizations, cybersecurity specialists, and Amnesty International. The list includes over 1,000 Indians, including at least 40 journalists, and several members of Parliament. It said the Indian government used it to spy on around 300 people between 2017 and 2019.
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