Cellebrite and other spyware makers are playing catch-up with Apple and Signal to break into their systems. As Cellebrite keeps cracking iPhones, Apple has been updating its software to provide better safety to its users.

It should not come as a surprise that the technology used to build Aadhaar and DigiYatra is being supplied by the same company that also provides technology to India’s policing agencies for surveillance and control.

Bill Gates represents a global economic order, which promotes philanthropy as a guise to influence various state actors to promote businesses in policy. The Gates and Modi meeting is thus a meeting of two power centres that are collaborating for profit and control.

While the government websites are replacing photos of political functionaries, the social media platforms have been ignored. For example, the Maan Ki baat episodes continue to be available on both the prime minister’s youtube channel as well as his personal youtube page. 

It is unclear on what basis the messages were sent to different people across the world by MeITY. The messages being delivered to foreign nationals has raised many questions on privacy violations in India.

Surveillance infrastructures and laws amended post 26/11 Mumbai Attacks including PMLA in 2012 gave wide powers to investigative agencies. These powers meant to stop terror financing give Law Enforcement Agencies like ED unlimited powers with no oversight. We are now witnessing a political fallout of their lack of accountability. 

An election campaign being “launched by the prime minister” raises doubts and eyebrows. Does getting in a contestant for the polls for what is an EC activity, uphold the promise of a ‘level playing field’?

The recent developments with several individuals' Aadhaar being de-activated has created a flurry of concerned activity among the political class in India about the dangers of this system.

Security researcher Sai Krishna Kothapalli of Hackcrew published a report revealing details of the security issue.

While the amount of work for them is being increased with every new module added into unwieldy apps, the workers' wages have stagnated.

While the Bill is being praised by the telecom industry for replacing archaic colonial laws, the Telecommunication Bill 2023 is expected to provide a larger control than these colonial laws to the Government of India and its institutions.

This welfare distribution via Direct Benefit Transfer was thought as capable of significantly influencing the electoral outcome in favour of the ruling Bharat Rastra Samithi.

The tragedy in India is that an external threat to security has seen the state weaponise all forms of governance systems against its own citizens. 

The Indian security establishment always followed a security through secrecy model. CERT-IN is also being fit into that model where no information is shared with anyone outside the security industry.

A bureaucratic body under MeitY, CERT-IN is clearly not an independent institution and has no history of actually conducting serious forensic audits.

As unions gain prominence and political parties show willingness to address platform workers' concerns, the era of unregulated platforms appears to be ending. The upcoming Telangana elections could also decide the course of a welfare law for workers.

It is time to renew efforts to de-mystify technology with the aim of surveillance reforms, before this Digital Dystopia becomes a permanent future.