Surveillance fears as India concerns new digital IDs in Kashmir | Technological innovation News

University student Mehak is used to regular identification checks by stability forces and officials in Indian-administered Kashmir’s most important town of Srinagar and always carries two varieties of ID. Quickly, she may perhaps need to carry but a further in her purse.

Options for a new spouse and children ID in the disputed Himalayan area have caused confusion and irritation among several inhabitants like Mehak, although rights campaigners panic the programme could direct to elevated surveillance and info hacks.

“Families currently use their ID cards if they want to entry any social welfare programmes. So why is this needed?” mentioned Mehak, 22, who questioned that her very last identify be withheld.

Regional authorities have reported the JK Relatives ID, an 8-digit code assigned to each individual home, would make improvements to accessibility to social welfare added benefits this kind of as subsidised food grains.

It usually means family members will not have to implement for positive aspects below many strategies, as eligibility selections will be automatic centered on the data, claimed Prerna Puri, a commissioner in Indian-administered Kashmir’s data technologies department.

Across India, the federal government is undertaking a broad digitisation push, including well being data, house titles, railway bookings and utility payments, as section of the Electronic India programme aimed at far better governance.

In Indian-administered Kashmir, some see the new spouse and children IDs as portion of a marketing campaign to exert higher management above residents.

The Indian govt led by Primary Minister Narendra Modi withdrew Kashmir’s autonomous status in 2019 and break up the former state into two federal territories, aiming to tighten its grip on the Muslim-greater part area.

Kashmir people are proper to be cautious of the government’s motives, stated Angad Singh Khalsa, an impartial human rights campaigner, as they have been singled out in advance of for larger surveillance on the grounds of countrywide security.

“Even if the federal government intends to supply us with benefits by producing these new IDs, their authoritarian therapy in the direction of the people of Jammu and Kashmir has designed us question their intentions,” he stated.

‘Trust deficit’

Kashmir is claimed in whole but ruled in portion by India and Pakistan, who have fought two wars around the territory.

A crackdown on a well-liked uprising and general public protests towards Indian rule in the area have killed countless numbers of men and women, generally in the 1990s, when the violence peaked.

Since its particular position was revoked, a lot of more civilians, safety personnel and rebels have been killed.

In anticipation of protests immediately after the transfer, the authorities imposed a curfew, minimize the internet for lengthy durations, and tightened protection.

From 2020, the authorities has demanded anyone in Indian-administered Kashmir to implement for domicile certificates that allow for them to vote in area elections, get farmland and homes, and utilize to public universities and for careers.

Many residents, notably Muslims, have not signed up for these certificates, unsure of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s

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Tech tool offers police ‘mass surveillance on a budget’

By GARANCE BURKE and JASON DEAREN

September 2, 2022 GMT

Local law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina have been using an obscure cellphone tracking tool, at times without search warrants, that gives them the power to follow people’s movements months back in time, according to public records and internal emails obtained by The Associated Press.

Police have used “Fog Reveal” to search hundreds of billions of records from 250 million mobile devices, and harnessed the data to create location analyses known among law enforcement as “patterns of life,” according to thousands of pages of records about the company.

Sold by Virginia-based Fog Data Science LLC, Fog Reveal has been used since at least 2018 in criminal investigations ranging from the murder of a nurse in Arkansas to tracing the movements of a potential participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The tool is rarely, if ever, mentioned in court records, something that defense attorneys say makes it harder for them to properly defend their clients in cases in which the technology was used.

The company was developed by two former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security officials under former President George W. Bush. It relies on advertising identification numbers, which Fog officials say are culled from popular cellphone apps such as Waze, Starbucks and hundreds of others that target ads based on a person’s movements and interests, according to police emails. That information is then sold to companies like Fog.

“It’s sort of a mass surveillance program on a budget,” said Bennett Cyphers, a special adviser at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy rights advocacy group.

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This story, supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, is part of an ongoing Associated Press series, “Tracked,” that investigates the power and consequences of decisions driven by algorithms on people’s everyday lives.

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The documents and emails were obtained by EFF through Freedom of Information Act requests. The group shared the files with The AP, which independently found that Fog sold its software in about 40 contracts to nearly two dozen agencies, according to GovSpend, a company that keeps tabs on government spending. The records and AP’s reporting provide the first public account of the extensive use of Fog Reveal by local police, according to analysts and legal experts who scrutinize such technologies.

Federal oversight of companies like Fog is an evolving legal landscape. On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission sued a data broker called Kochava that, like Fog, provides its clients with advertising IDs that authorities say can easily be used to find where a mobile device user lives, which violates rules the commission enforces. And there are bills before Congress now that, if passed, would regulate the industry.

“Local law enforcement is at the front lines of trafficking and missing persons cases, yet these departments are often behind in technology adoption,” Matthew Broderick, a Fog managing partner, said in an email. “We fill a gap for underfunded and understaffed departments.”

Because

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