Come clean

The revelation made by the New York Times that the Indian government agreed to buy Pegasus spyware from Israel's NSO group is startling and has stoked a new political controversy in the country. Months back in July-August last year, a consortium of 17 media organisations and a non-profit, Forbidden Stories, came out with names of thousands of individuals who would have been possibly snooped in numerous countries across the world. Names of many highly placed individuals in India including many Opposition leaders, journalists, Constitutional authorities, civilians, a former Chief Justice were also included in the list. But the issue goes far beyond the political realm and involves complex strategic and Constitutional aspects that demand urgent discourse within the country. The allegations leveled by the Opposition are grave. In the first place, the Central government has been alleged of misleading the Parliament — an institution held so supreme within any democratic nation. As a place which represents the views of the entire populace of the country, the Parliament, needless to say, commands a high degree of respect. A statement made in the Parliament is considered a reference point of high credibility. Prominent ministers in the government had clearly stated in the Parliament last year that the government was not involved in purchase and misuse of the spyware. The NYT report however completely contradicts these statements. Either of the two will have to be termed as correct and the other as wrong. Government's silence on the matter is indeed worrying — it is naïve as it neither admits nor denies the charges. If the government didn't purchase the spyware, it should come out loud and flag the NYT report as incoherent through citing authentic records. National government can in no way be allowed to be defamed if the charges made against it are untrue. The question here goes much far beyond the images of political leaders; it is a blot on the national image of the country as a whole. The obvious course of action should be to deny the allegations if those are incorrect, and punish the culprits if the allegations are found true. And also, the Pegasus issue is not just about presenting false facts or hiding information before the Parliament. The government had even responded in negative to the Supreme Court's direct question regarding the use of Pegasus. The central issue, however, is the right to privacy of citizens. The potential overreaches of the Pegasus spyware, to a certain extent, exceed far beyond what is governed by the Indian laws. The existing laws simply don't appear to cover the aspects of the technically sophisticated nature of the spyware. None of the crimes enlisted in the existing data laws, and even the punishments, match the magnitude of espionage that Pegasus cand potentially carry out. As of now, the legal framework of the country may not be updated enough to deal with the issue. Furthermore, such intrusive is the nature of surveillance made through Pegasus is that the invader can see the phone's location and even take control of its camera and microphone. The extensive nature of the surveillance appears to have totally disrupted the balance between state's prerogative of monitoring of demography and people's right to privacy, and that too in a stealthy manner. While the government has not made any response until now, the NYT has also not come up with an attributed source or proper method of arriving at the conclusion. The newspaper, however, drew a link between the mutual visits of the two leaders and India's "support of Israel at the UN's Economic and Social Council to deny observer status to a Palestinian human rights organisation." Before considering what the government has to say in this regard, no conclusion can be arrived at. But for that, the government will have to respond in a timely and appropriate manner. Government's silence could well be a question mark on its accountability to the people. The government must act very responsibly and cautiously in this matter.