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The 6th Annual P.M. Mukhi Memorial Human Rights Lecture

by Justice Gautam S. Patel (Former Judge, Bombay High Court)

LHC 101, IISER Pune Campus

The 6th Annual P.M. Mukhi Memorial Human Rights Lecture will be delivered by Justice Gautam S. Patel (Former Judge, Bombay High Court)

Title - I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE: Human rights in an age of pervasive surveillance

Date -  October 21, 2024 (Monday)

Time -  06:00 pm 

Venue - Lecture Hall Complex, Room 101, IISER Pune Campus

Abstract

We are too ready - often, too eager -- to surrender our constitutional protections in the name of 'security' and 'safety'. Digitalization (to be separated from digitization) is not just pervasive; it is invasive. We are reduced to assemblages of data. What happens to us, as individuals, as human beings, as citizens, when our very identities are 'harvested', stored, run through algorithms of various stripes and even commercially exploited? Surveillance takes many forms, and has deep impacts. A silent and often unnoticed dimension is the systematic 'othering' of us as a people of a single nation, dividing us along lines we neither anticipated nor wanted. An understanding of the extent of the concern is necessary if we are to arrive at any understanding of what we believe is our right, and what it is that should define us as a nation and as a civil society. Finally, surveillance is about control, about power;  who should or should not have this terrible power?

Human Rights Lecture 2024