The e-Committee of the Supreme Court recently released its draft vision document for Phase III of the e-Courts project.
It is felt that Phase III should harness technology for service delivery without increasing surveillance risks.
What was the e-Courts project?
The e-Courts project is monitored by the e-Committee.
Phases I and II had dealt with digitisation of the judiciary.
They carried out e-filing, tracking cases online, uploading judgments online, etc.
The job is not complete, particularly at the lower levels of the judiciary.
But the project can so far be termed a success.
Especially during the pandemic, despite some hiccups, the Supreme Court and High Courts have been able to function online.
What does Phase III plan for?
For the Phase III, there are plans to upgrade the electronic infrastructure of the judiciary.
It also aims at enabling access to lawyers and litigants.
Importantly, the draft vision document goes on to propose an “ecosystem approach” to justice delivery.
It suggests a “seamless exchange of information” between various branches of the State.
This covers exchange between the judiciary, the police and the prison systems through the Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS).
How does it work?
Each person's interactions with government agencies is integrated into a unified database.
This 360-degree profile creation approach is the main objective of Phase III.
While social media platforms and technology companies use this for targeted advertising, the government uses it for targeted surveillance.
Once any government department moves online, their pen-and-paper registers will become excel sheets, shareable with a single click.
Localised data will become centralised one.
The data collected, shared and collated will be housed within the Home Ministry under the ICJS.
What are the key concerns with this?
Data can be useful when it provides anonymous, aggregated, and statistical information about issues, without identifying the individuals.
But when combined with extensive data sharing and storage, data collection becomes a cause for concern.
The ICJS may thus exacerbate the existing class and caste inequalities that characterise the police and prison system.
This is because the exercise of data creation happens at local police stations.
Police stations have historically contributed to the criminalisation of some communities.
This had been possible through colonial-era laws such as the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871.
They have labeled such communities as “habitual offenders”.
Also, no clear explanation has been offered for why the Home Ministry needs access to some court data that may have absolutely no relation to criminal law.
This is of particular concern as the process serves no purpose other than profiling and surveillance.
What should Phase III ensure?
The objectives of the e-courts project were to streamline judicial processes, reduce pendency, and help the litigants.
But technology should operate within the constitutional framework of the fundamental rights and not lead to exclusion, inequity and surveillance.
For this, the e-Courts must move towards localisation of data, instead of centralisation.
The ecosystem approach should be reconsidered.
The e-Committee must prevent the “seamless exchange” of data between the branches of the state that ought to remain separate.
The Supreme Court must take care not to violate the privacy standards that it set in Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), particularly when India does not yet have a data protection regime.
