Privacy risk: Report says India among 75 nations with AI surveillance tools

Even as right to privacy has been declared a fundamental right, India does not have a personal data protection law yet

India is gradually opening up to the threat of mass surveillance and cyber snooping by the state as well as rogue actors, as modern technology makes its way into the country in a landscape of weak privacy laws.

A report by foreign policy think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) has said India is among 75 countries in the world with access to modern AI surveillance technology— putting it in the same list as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. The study was published in September.

“Many governments in the Gulf, East Asia, and South/Central Asia are procuring advanced analytic