India Requires Internet Services to Collect and Store Vast Amount of Customer Data, Building a Path to Mass Surveillance

Privacy and online free expression are once again under threat in India, thanks to vaguely worded cybersecurity directions—promulgated by India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) earlier this year—that impose draconian mass surveillance obligations on internet services, threatening privacy and anonymity and weakening security online.

Directions 20(3)/2022 - CERT-In came into effect on June 28th, sixty days after being published without stakeholder consultation. Astonishingly, India’s Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the …

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