Look at the details of a tender put out by the Home Ministry, as reported by Medianama in June. Everything that can be monitored will be monitored. Every move we make is being watched, every word we say online, every link we click, every mail we send, every SMS we send, every location we visit — everything is planned to be tracked (or perhaps already is). And we haven’t even started talking about the UID info.
At some point of time, this goes beyond the norm. We are supposedly citizens of a free country. Given some of the steps the government has shown itself capable of taking, there is little to say when the limits will be crossed and citizens who have opinions different from what they think is right can find themselves being harassed by officials.
It is one thing to say that the threat to terrorism is very real and hence this is called for. But there have to be safeguards for individuals.
As a society, we need to think harder about how intrusive we want the government to be in all our lives. The time is now. Because once the pattern is set, as we have seen from the US, no future government is going to undo it.
