Indian government’s proposal to install chips in new television set-top boxes stating that such a move would violate people’s right to privacy and send a wrong signal to the world, was criticized by security experts on Monday.
The motive behind implementing such a move was to track data about channels watched and their duration which would help advertisers and the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) to spend their advertising expenditure wisely.
However, despite the positivity put forward by the government’s new agenda, it has drawn immense concern from industry experts stating that the proposal has a novel objective but if implemented, it could potentially be misused, reported ET Telecom. Experts have further shared their concern by saying there are various other ways out to track such data but installing a chip on set-top boxes would amount to violation of right to privacy — both personal and data privacy, which has been declared as a fundamental right by the Supreme Court of India, reported IANS after having an exclusive discussion with industry veterans.
Concerns have also been raised that implementing such chips in a smart TV may even reveal the browsing habits and personal preferences of many users. But various sources have led to the conclusion that chips embedded on a set-top boxes will be mandatory very soon there which is highly will draw concerns about use of the data collected by the chip for other purposes.
