The Aryan Khan case

Why it is a privacy wake-up call for India.

Aryan Khan son of Bollywood superstar Sharukh Khan was arrested when a raid was conducted by Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on 2nd October 2021, and our news channel hasn’t shown us any real news since then, even though there were many sensitive issues that deserved more attention.

If it’s a witch hunt or there is actual wrongdoing we may know in the future. But with this high-profile case, there came another etching concern over “privacy”. Can police arrest you and sue you just by your chat logs? Well, technically if anything is printable and documented they can sue you.

How exactly we can keep our privacy in this cyberspace? Obviously, there isn’t a foolproof application or internet space where you can go incognito completely. But there is a feature called “Disappearing messages”, even though it has been introduced for a while but hasn’t been used for the sake of good. Disappearing messages add a layer of extra security by not having the data after a certain amount of time. (Even though there are ifs and buts about it and tech giants need to make it robust to meet data privacy requirements one step ahead)

Maybe it’s time that we rethink on data we put out every day on the internet without understanding the consequences as to how it can be used against any individual.