Private, not confidential: How data is a casualty in the time of pandemic

Battling the pandemic demands an unprecedented amount of citizen surveillance and data collection. In all of this, does privacy matter? Neha Alawadhi and Arundhuti Dasgupta report

The screen is full of professors staring intently into their web-cameras, focused on a cyber-security professional telling them about the dangers of online meeting rooms that have replaced their lecture halls. Barely a minute into it, he is interrupted by several voices: could he tutor them on mailbox management too? For many on the call, the online world is something they had merely encountered on a student’s screen. Working the internet is more worrying, not keeping themselves or their data secure.

Within days of the lockdown, broking houses in Mumbai found their traders red-flagging serious risks to their operations as