Of the many issues raised by the notorious Niira Radia tapes, one is about the right to privacy. Can phones be tapped by government agencies, including the income-tax department, and if yes, can such tapes be “leaked” to the media? And most important of all, should the media print their transcripts? These questions acquire a certain extra edge now that the country’s most respected industrialist, Ratan Tata, has approached the court to quash further publication of any such conversations, citing his privacy concerns.
Privacy has not been a particularly major issue in India in the way it is in the United States, the United Kingdom and other Western democracies. In those countries, there are strict laws governing a citizen’s right to privacy. These do not merely pertain to extreme circumstances like tapping of phones or snooping on emails, but also to data collection by agencies, both public and private. At this very moment a huge debate is on in the US about WikiLeaks and the invasive X-ray machines at airports that can see through clothes, with many rights organisations attacking the government for undermining the privacy of the citizen. Close circuit cameras in public places are another red flag, as are detailed questionnaires that ask minute details about a person.
Infractions of such laws do take place, of course. When the war on terror began in the US after 9/11, the government made it clear that national security would have to take precedence over privacy. A shaken nation did not protest, but since then, as evidence of abuses by security agencies mounted, the voices against rampant intrusion into privacy began to be heard.
Gradually though, privacy has become inextricably linked with security and governments, including in India, can cite national interest to impose curbs on it. There are well laid down procedures to snoop on a person — the sanction of the home secretary is required — but there is no guarantee that law and order agencies do not circumvent those steps during investigations. Certainly many politicians, especially those in the Opposition, have expressed fears that their phones are tapped and journalists tend to assume that their phones may be bugged too. With the widespread use of cellphones has come new technology that can make tapping easier. The Indian government is, in fact, trying to get BlackBerry to give it access to make it easier to read encrypted messages.
But it is not all about tapping phones and emails. The Unique Identification scheme, Aadhar, will provide a unique 12-digit number to every Indian which can then be used to open bank accounts, getting a passport or a driver’s licence and establishing the person’s identity. Several countries have this in one form or the other. Finger prints and iris recognition will be taken and stored in vast databases. The government says this will help the poor access services, those opposed to it fear that given India’s poor record of data security, it will play havoc with the privacy of people. At the very least, the database will be freely available to a host of agencies, which is not a very comforting thought.
Should we worry? To the extent that some details inevitably have to be shared, such as address, date of birth, phone number (and in many cases, salary), when anyone applies for a credit card or a loan, we are already giving up all kinds of information on demand. Yet, when that information falls into other hands, it can become menacing.
A phone conversation is a private affair. In their bid to investigate Ms Radia in a tax matter, the I-T department tapped her phone, after due permission from a top civil servant. She had conversations with hundreds of people (there are more than 5,000 tapes). Why should they suffer? Did Mr Tata or all those journalists know she was being tapped? And why should these conversations make it to print (or online)?
On the other hand, as many have argued, these are not just conversations about private and personal matters. They are not salacious in nature. They are connected to the telecom scandal and many companies, including one from the Tata’s group, is implicated in it. Public interest, therefore, trumps personal interest.
It is a tricky conundrum which the courts will have to tackle. Freedom of the press, privacy issues and above all public interest will have to be reconciled. There is also a wild card in this complex equation — the Internet. What stops an individual from getting hold of the tapes and posting them online for the listening pleasure of the world? If that person lives abroad, he could get away with it, because he wouldn’t have broken any Indian laws. Can privacy really be guarded in an age of Wikipedia, blogs, Facebook and Google maps? This is a debate that will remain with us for a long time to come.

n The writer is a senior journalist and commentator on current affairs based in Mumbai