To mark the 75th Independence day of India, the government had run a digital campaign asking people to uploaded selfies hoisting the national flag on harghartiranga.com. It received an overwhelming response. 6 crore Indian uploaded their selfies and 5 crore of them had "geotagged the location of their houses with their photos, and also shared their phone numbers to register on the portal," a report published on restofworld.org by journalist Srishti Jaswal says. Why it matters: The photos shared are publicly available for anyone to download or scrape (more on this later). They can be used for training AI based facial recognition systems, law enforcement, identification and surveillance purposes, all without the 'informed' consent of those who shared their personally identifiable information. Moreover, this data can be used for political campaigns or be shared or sold to third parties. Have accessing…
