Protect privacy

I refer to “Firms brace for Europe’s new rules” (January 30). Tech giants and some others positioned themselves as catalysts for a better world. But their systems and tools have also been used to undermine privacy and thus the basic right of the citizens in a democracy. Essentially, the search engine giants create a personality profile based on what we have been up to — and use this to send specific adverts. The information so gathered is used forever. Given that personal data constitutes the lifeline of governments and internet companies such as Google and Facebook tech companies and intelligence agencies are, in a way, in the same business — surveillance. Oddly enough, governments and tech companies provide the same kind of justification for what they do: that their surveillance is both necessary for national security in the case of governments and for economic viability in the case of corporations. This is the scary part; in fact, the European Court of Justice recently decided that EU citizens had the “right to be forgotten” and that search giants would have to comply if they wanted to continue to do business in Europe. The tech giants may not have set out to acquire political power, but they have, by coincidence, acquired the ability to shape our politics and our lives. As Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence of USA, had said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Europe has taken the first step to protect and safeguard the privacy of its citizens. It is time India too thought along similar lines.

H N Ramakrishna Bengaluru