Authoritarian Tech

Often lauded as technology-forward and as an early adopter, the Indian government is using increasingly stringent and invasive monitoring and surveillance technology on some of its lowest-paid workers.

Municipal authorities across the country are requiring sanitation workers, “Safai Karamcharis,” to wear GPS-enabled tracking devices during their work hours. The watch is also equipped with a camera that takes live snapshots, and a microphone that can listen in on conversations. 

If a worker leaves a geo-fenced area or takes a break, they potentially face salary cuts and even dismissal. The workers are also responsible for maintaining the device; if it breaks down, the cost of a new device can be deducted from their pay.

So, how do authorities justify this level of surveillance? 

They claim that close monitoring will increase efficiency and attendance rates at work. Back in November, authorities in Chandigarh, the Le Corbusier-designed joint capital of the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, sent legal notices to 82 safai karamcharis for being absent from their scheduled shift. Last month, the New Delhi-based Internet Freedom Foundation, an advocacy organization, sent an open letter to the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis decrying the “constant and dehumanizing surveillance of Safai Karamcharis” and quoted the workers comparing the monitoring to the “ancient practice of upper castes exerting control over lower caste workers.”

Sanitation workers, the letter goes on to say, have expressed their concerns “over the resultant physical and mental issues that will ensue as a result of wearing these devices.” The project was introduced back in 2020. Since then, workers have organized multiple strikes and protests, all without any success. The program has only grown. The Internet Freedom Foundation cited “multiple” reports of such surveillance tactics from the cities of Ranchi, Nagpur, and Ghaziabad, in the states of Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh in the east, west and north of India respectively.

Safai karamcharis have low salaries and are often left without any protective gear. They see improved working conditions as the way to improve productivity, but municipalities appear to believe that the budget is better spent on micro-surveillance devices.

I spoke to Anushka Jain from the Internet Freedom Foundation to understand how this constant monitoring affects the morale and working lives of safai karamcharis.

She told me that because of the microphone in the device, workers are scared to talk freely with their colleagues, and “women even feel that they cannot go to the bathroom since they are afraid that the male supervisors may surveil them in the restrooms.”

Jain also explained that the Safai Karamcharis, predominantly belong to Dalit and Adivasi communities as well as other oppressed sections of the society. She notes that this type of surveillance is a result of both caste and class issues. “Historically, these groups have been under the control of  so-called upper castes and classes in India. That’s why they don’t feel that it’s problematic to dehumanize them.”

IN GLOBAL NEWS:

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week to overturn Roe v. Wade, describing the 1973 ruling as tantamount to an “abuse of judicial authority,” has put the onus on technology companies to safeguard users’ data and privacy. According to researchers, up to 26 states are expected to ban or extensively curtail abortions. Some tech companies have already indicated that they will support their employees’ choices, including reimbursing those who need to travel out of state for abortions. But it’s unclear what data employees will have to provide to avail these benefits. It is also unclear if reproductive health data stored by tech companies or gathered through surveillance technology can be subpoenaed by government agencies. Advocacy groups have already advised women to delete period-tracking apps. But it’s next to impossible to completely erase a digital trail and tech companies have so far fudged questions about how they will protect highly sensitive user data.

A study published on June 23 in “The Lancet Infectious Diseases” estimates that as many as 19.8 million lives were saved in one year, from December 8, 2020 to December 8, 2021, because of vaccinations. But the study highlighted the gap in vaccine accessibility by estimating that a further 45% of deaths could have been prevented in low-income countries had the target to vaccinate 20% of the population, set by the global organization Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX), been met. In a line at the end of the article, the researchers called for the combating of “misinformation…to improve vaccine demand.” In another study, published in “The Lancet Discovery Science” in May, the researchers argued that the studies they reviewed suggested that “anti-vax clusters [were] better positioned and connected not only among their community, but also within the clusters that have not yet decided which path to follow.” In other words, unchallenged misinformation costs lives.

Mohammad Zubair, the co-founder of an Indian fact-checking website, has been arrested by the Delhi police ostensibly for a tweet he posted four years ago. The tweet was a screenshot, a gag from a popular Hindi film released in 1983. Zubair has long been perceived as a thorn in the side of the Indian government. He is also reviled by the right wing Hindu supremacists who are a substantial and voluble presence on social media in India. In court, the police argued that Zubair sought to intentionally inflame religious feelings in a bid to achieve fame. But independent observers might point to a growing pattern in India of selectively clamping down on certain kinds of online speech. On June 27, the day on which Zubair was arrested, India signed a document at the G7 meeting in Germany committing to “protecting the freedom of expression and opinion online and offline.

WHAT WE’RE READING: 

• Evidence continues to mount that Meta algorithms are practically powerless to combat misinformation and false claims. “MIT Technology Review” reports that cancer patients are often subjected to advertising that promotes “treatments that have been proved to cause acute physical harm” and “pointed users toward highly expensive treatments with dubious outcomes.”
• A new survey from the Pew Research Center shows that up to 69% of U.S. journalists say Twitter is the social media site they use “most or second most for their job.” But only 13% of U.S. adults turn “regularly” to Twitter for news. Twitter is particularly popular among television journalists and the youngest group of American journalists. Given the survey findings, could U.S. journalists be guilty of attributing disproportionate weight to opinions and issues that have currency on Twitter?