Unlawful surveillance

Privacy of life is a sacrosanct affair, and enjoys protection under ordains of law and societal ethics. Any attempt to violate it is contested. A three-member bench of the Supreme Court has written a treatise, declaring it illegal to indulge in unauthorised recordings either for purposes of extortion or evidence-gathering. The judgment has come at a time of social media strides when the society is quite inquisitive making privacy a questionable issue. There is no dearth of audio and video recordings, and their dissemination on media, of people who fell prey to espionage, ultimately making their private life a subject of public discourse. Thus, the learned judges were on the mark as they outlawed secretly collecting information about private conversations without the consent of the person(s) involved, and termed it a breach of constitutional rights. The ruling is in accordance with Article 14 of the Constitution that guarantees the inviolability of human dignity and the privacy of the home, as well as in relevance with PECA 2016 legislation.

It is soothing to note that the court was firm as it maintained that a "clear distinction exists between routine recordings made in the ordinary course of official duty and recordings made with the intention of laying a trap to procure evidence". This is where a redline is crossed, and the intention of making public even a bad or contested deed goes over the board. The court, thus, ruled that any surveillance with the intention of using it for extortion, or other illegal purposes, constitutes criminal conduct. Likewise, it is also a crime to take pictures or transmit a person's image or voice even if that is meant to be in public welfare. The court, deliberating over a case, wherein the complainant resorted to unlawful surveillance, noted that such an 'unlawful' act without the consent of concerned person(s) or official endorsement "effectively transforms a victim into an offender". It is a landmark ruling full of clarity and must come to shed light on high-profile allegations of yesteryears, wherein privacy of judges, politicians and civil society members was breached for self-serving purposes.