Proposed CBDC from India's central bank, which could get a test run in 2022, has some concerned about the implications for privacy. The "digital rupee" pilot could launch as early as April.
Recent amendment to India's election laws enables the government to link the Aadhar national identification system to voter rolls, raising worries that voter ID may be used for privacy invasion.
The legal battle between Facebook-owned WhatsApp and the Indian government is a bit of a high-stakes game of chess determining both global consumer privacy and the sovereignty of tech companies to build such privacy on their own platforms.
Recent rules passed in India that threaten end-to-end encryption are being challenged in court by WhatsApp. New "traceability" rules require social media platforms with at least five million users to be able to identify the originator of a message.
A combination of negative public sentiment and a legal challenge in the Indian court system has prompted WhatsApp to delay the new terms found in its privacy policy update.
As tensions heighten again in the disputed border territories of the Himalayas, India has banned 118 Chinese apps in the name of national security; Tencent games, Baidu and Alipay are among them.
Indian government has cited national security as the reason for banning 59 Chinese apps, including popular apps such as TikTok, UC Browser and Clash of Kings.
Privacy advocates are voicing opposition against India's long-awaited national data protection law as it makes broad exceptions for government agencies and stipulates high fines and costs.
Despite similarity to the EU GDPR, proposed India data protection bill would allow the government unfettered access to citizen data for "national security" purposes.
India's largest nuclear power plant was recently under malware attack on their administrative systems, which was isolated and prevented attackers from gaining access to the plant controls.
