For those outside India: reports suggest that starting April 1, 2026, Indian income tax authorities could be empowered to access emails and social media accounts during investigations. This is raising serious privacy and surveillance concerns. Digital communication in India isn’t just casual it’s where people discuss politics, religion, personal life, and dissent. Granting such broad access without strong, transparent safeguards feels like a dangerous expansion of state power. Tax enforcement matters, but mass access to private digital lives sets a worrying precedent especially in a country with weak data-protection enforcement. Curious to hear perspectives from the global privacy community: Is this normal enforcement, or a step toward normalized surveillance?
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Politicians too? Will this be made available to the public?
I mean I unironically think every politicians financial records should be public.
Will not be available for the public but the tax authorities and govt can see those data
This is against the privacy of indian people, they shouldn't have the rights to access their social media without consent?
This law was passed some time ago i think maybe feb 2025 that they would be able to access everything from chats to other stuff if they find you suspicious. Ridiculous right ? But they have already introduced sim binding etc plus the situation around the world seems similar ,this is so unfair .
Anyone calling this "normal" is not normal.
Even most right Wingers are defending this.
Anyone trusting a government to exert this kind of total control is not sane of mind.
They already can access your cell location this is just another add on
Another one bites the dust, it's non stop globally now
Don't they want us to give them the user and password in plain text? Or better yet the government to manage the account and give us our "credentials" for our security of course, can't lost your password / passkey if the government stores it for you.
/s
This is misleading at best because to perform these searches they require a search warrant from the court. If the authorities do not have any search warrant you can challenge the action in the court under the current data protection and right to privacy laws.
There is no mass surveillance happening like you are suggesting and investigations will be done on a case by case basis.
While the writing in the law is alarmingly vague and poorly written, I doubt it will be used as a tool for mass surveillance and will be limited to few individuals. Overall, I DO NOT SUPPORT THIS OVERREACH but the current reaction to it is overblown.