Indian elections: fighting for votes with the world’s largest data mine

These are the apps that every Indian has on their phone – apps for ordering a cab or food or finding your next date – innocuous, everyday and unobtrusive for billions of people around the world.

In India, these apps could potentially tell politicians anything they want to know about you, whether you want to or not.

A person’s religion, their native language and “how they message their friends on social media” are all data points that politicians want to have access to, according to Ludwig Joshi, a political strategist who is working on the re-election campaigns of at least a dozen little-known lawmakers this election.

He also claims that India’s high smartphone penetration and weak regulations allowing private companies to sell data mean that most political parties collect “data to do everything”, even knowing “what you’re eating today”.

The question is, why do they care?

Simply put, this level of information makes it possible to predict vote outcomes, Joshi said, “and these predictions usually turn out to be accurate.”

But perhaps the bigger question is, “Why should I care?”

Microtargeting, which Privacy International describes as using personal data “to deliver unprecedented personalized information and advertising to users,” is not new to elections.

But it really gained attention following former US President Donald Trump’s victory in 2016.

At the time, political consultancy Cambridge Analytica was accused of using data sold by Facebook to create profiles of people and send them pro-Trump content to help him win. The company denied the allegations but suspended its CEO, Alexander Nix.

People wondered whether the ads they saw influenced their votes, and countries around the world took action, concerned about the impact on democracy.

In India, a Cambridge Analytica affiliate claimed that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Indian National Congress were clients, a claim both parties denied.

The country’s then IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also warned that action would be taken against the company and Facebook if they misused the data of Indian citizens.

But since then, there has been little to stop voter microtargeting, says data and security researcher Srinivas Kodali.

“All other election commissions like the UK and Singapore have tried to understand the role of data and micro-targeting in elections and have created some form of checks and balances, which is what an election commission should normally do, but we are not seeing that in India,” he said.

The problem is further compounded in India because it is a “data society that was planned and built by the government without any safeguards,” Kodali said.

In fact, there are approximately 650 million smartphone users in the country, all of whom have apps that could potentially share data with third parties.

But smartphones don’t have to be vulnerable: some of the biggest holders of personal data are governments themselves, and even governments sell it to private companies.

“The government has built a large database of its citizens and shared it with the private sector,” Kodali said.

Prateek Wagle, executive director of the digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation, warned that this leaves people vulnerable to increased surveillance and gives them little control over what information they choose to keep private.

Meanwhile, a data protection law passed by the government last year has yet to be implemented, experts say, and a lack of rules is the problem, Kodali said.

“It’s like the Wild West of the Internet.”

So what was the outcome of all the available data? India entered this election year as, in Joshi’s words, “the biggest data mine in the world right now.”

The problem, Joshi said, is that no one is doing anything illegal.

“I’m not asking [the app]”I would ask, ‘Tell me the number of users on your site, their mobile numbers and all their contact numbers,’ but I can ask, ‘Do you eat vegetarian or non-vegetarian food in your area?'” he explains.

And the app can pass that data on because the user granted permission.

“For example, you have 10 different Indian apps on your phone that give you access to your contacts, gallery, microphone, speaker and location, including your current location,” says Joshi of Neeti I, which is using the data to understand voter behaviour patterns in particular constituencies.

This data, along with data collected by party workers, is then used to decide who should be a candidate, where the candidate’s wife should perform puja (prayer) and aarti (prayer), what speeches they should give, and even what they should wear.

But will this level of targeting really be effective in changing people’s minds? It remains to be seen.

But activists argue that this is essentially an invasion of people’s privacy, and that by extension, this level of detail could be used against people in the future.

“The fact that it’s happening is troubling,” said Pratik Wagle, executive director of the digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation.

“What we’ve seen is that there is often no clear distinction between how the data of people who are beneficiaries of government programs is handled and how that information is then used by particular parties in power at a particular state or national level to micro-target campaign messages.”

The law also allows governments and their agencies to exempt themselves from broad provisions at their discretion, and also gives governments the power to process, use or share this personal data with third parties.

Wagre worries that a future administration may take this a step further.

“You could also say, ‘Let’s all look at who is supporting us and only give them the benefit.’

Kodali said the use of this data also comes against the backdrop of a larger misinformation problem in India, which, combined with the volume of data being made available, is a real problem.

“When we talk about artificial intelligence, targeted advertising, voter microtargeting, and so on, a lot of that falls under the concept of computational propaganda,” he explains. “Questions about this were raised strongly during the 2016 Trump election, when it was thought to have been influenced by foreign powers.”

Kodali said that to keep elections fair, campaigns’ use of data and technology must be regulated in the same way that money and advertising spending is currently regulated.

“If one or a few parties or groups have access to these technologies to manipulate elections, the elections may be free but they will not appear fair,” he warns.