Who's watching Jason Bourne?

Fictional spy's return to big screen brings along crucial questions on mass surveillance and privacy

Back in 2002, the big screen introduced us to a man found floating in the Mediterranean Sea. This man, an American, had no memories of who he was when Italian fishermen rescued him from the water. All he had to tie himself to a completely wiped-out past were two gunshot wounds on his back, and a tiny laser projector embedded in his hip, which had the number of a safe deposit box in Zurich.

Fans of Robert Ludlum's books immediately recognised this man to be a fictional spy called Jason Bourne, the protagonist of Ludlum's Bourne series. The movie, called The Bourne Identity after the first book, featured Matt Damon as the former spy who begins a nail-biting adventure to understand who he is. Damon returned to the big screen in India this Friday with director Paul Greengrass' Jason Bourne. This is the fifth instalment of the thriller series, and a direct sequel to The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), also directed by Greengrass. Effectively, this is the third time that Greengrass and Damon are collaborating for the Bourne series.

While Greengrass' action-packed and chaos-driven scenes have always served the series well, this time around fans have another reason to think about the movie, long after they've left the cinemas. In the script that Greengrass has co-written with film editor Christopher Rouse, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) uses data from a social media start-up called Deep Dream as a new surveillance measure.

The nexus between surveillance authorities and information technology (IT)-based businesses is worrying even in reel life. This indicates the government has moved beyond traffic cameras and crossed over to the dark side where personal privacy is but an un-achievable dream. The movie points to how the tug-of-war between the concept of privacy and what is perceived as 'national security' is a losing battle for the former.

What brings the 'reel' terror closer home is the fact that surveillance and security agencies have already begun to tap into private encrypted data. The most talked-about and recent example being when the US government and Apple got into a legal battle when investigators wanted access to Apple's encrypted database for a case.

"The thought of surveillance agencies joining hands with IT companies is a very worrying thought indeed," says cyber security expert Pavan Duggal. "Online liberties of people are increasingly getting impacted and governments have over-arching powers and, therefore, expecting that you'll have privacy in today's world is an erroneous thought."

The need of the hour, says Duggal, is to find a balance between protection of sovereign interests and law enforcement agencies on the one hand and private players on the other.

While Bourne hops across countries in his battle against CIA's covert operations, that's an unlikely scenario for real-life situations. "Just yesterday, a woman's Facebook and Instagram accounts were deactivated while she was uploading live videos of police brutality in the US. You have to limit the privileges given to law enforcement agencies. You cannot use the expectation of the happening of a crime for tracking sensitive personal data, or more and more people will be pushed into using the Dark Net," says Duggal.