If Google becomes Big Brother, we can all hide out in India

All I wanted to do was check my balance online.

It took me about a month and juggling approximately half a dozen passwords and assorted numbers.

My account bristles with numbers which guard my account like alphanumeric Black Cats. I sit at my computer with a folder full of chits of papers in order to do some “paperless” banking.

Customer number. Account number. Debit card number. Debit card PIN. Internet PIN. Transaction PIN. Telephone PIN. OTP or one-time password.

But then it turns out my ATM card is not a debit card and therefore not linked to my net-banking. That means applying for a debit card which will be followed in the mail by a new PIN. By then I’ve tried to change the password so many times, it is locked which implies another 24-hour wait. But wait, now the old account does not know about my new debit card in the virtual world of net-banking. And I am given yet another number to save – this is my complaint case number.

I tell this Mahabharata three times to very nice customer service reps in the course of one phone call after cycling through an obstacle course of menu options. They listen very politely and then ask me to please hold and then transfer my call, but not my story, to someone else on the food chain who says “How can I help you?” And so we begin again at the very beginning.

Sometimes I wish I lived in “context-aware” world that Google is talking about.

Google, says The New York Times , is “in the early stages of exploring the benefits we will get from combining many different devices into a single, hyperaware computing system.”

At a recent event for developers Google’s chief executive Larry Page discussed with NYT what that might look like:

“(L)ook at the unlocking that we showed,” Mr. Page said, referring to a system in which your computer detects that your watch is nearby, then lets you start using it without typing in a passcode. “It just makes a lot of sense,” Mr. Page said. “That’s a big hassle today.”

That’s just a small example of a world where computing moves beyond automating, to work across several devices in what Mr. Page calls “a multiscreen” world which understands your needs, sometimes even before you know them like an “extremely helpful, all-knowing, hyper-intelligent executive assistant”. That goes way beyond scanning your email to tailor ads suited to your tastes.

The only caveat is you have to surrender to Google-world. But that’s OK because its motto is “Don’t Be Evil”. Actually that motto has been quietly buried but the company, like most tech companies, wants to still project that smiley face.

The problem, of course, is the privacy trade-off. “Facebook and Google are themselves apparently harvesting far more data from us than the US government,” writes Rebecca Solnit in the London Review of Books .

Google tells the NYT the fuss about its StreetView programme was overblown and people have understood “it doesn’t really change your privacy that much.” But critics like Yash Levine are far from convinced. Levine writes about Google’s Street View “siphoning loads of personally identifiable data from people’s Wi-Fi connections all across the world. Emails, medical records, love notes, passwords, the whole works – anything that wasn’t encrypted was fair game.”

Google claimed that data collection was a “mistake” and it said it had plenty of safeguards in place when StreetView started in Bangalore. But it was still denied permission there for security reasons though now a limited version is available. Levine says the average person has very “little power” or “protection” when it goes up against any giant company. So you should think twice before giving any company, however benevolent, such power and so much data.

But Google is hungry for even more data to make its context-aware multi-screen world not just a reality, but an irresistible attraction for us, as indispensable as its search engine is for millions including this writer. And it’s not just Google. All kinds of major tech companies including Apple and Microsoft want us to never leave their all-service bubble. You can log out anytime you like but you can never leave.

Despite the grumblings about privacy, a company like Google counts on the fact that we value convenience and connection even more. We are already happy to give up bits and pieces of our privacy to silly online quizzes and games for the convenience of playing games with others. And yes, despite all the reservations stated in this article, I have used Google’s Street View program because it’s convenient.

However I wonder if a country like India will put the brakes on the onward march of this ambitious Google-world. And it has nothing to do with privacy. That’s not our big preoccupation here. We don’t have the privacy groups like EPICs and ACLUs leading that charge.

It’s more that India seems to be the mortal enemy of streamlining anything as my netbanking experience suggests. Every establishment would rather give me another physical loyalty card instead of just linking everything to my cellphone. On the other hand, my gym, which actually has branches in different places, will not give me a gym card I can use everywhere. I need to tell someone at my regular branch to email the other branch I want to use even if it’s just for a day. Our motto seems to be if you can complicate it, why simplify it?

Every attempt at a national ID card has ended up in some kind of dog-chasing-its-own-tail limbo. So now we have millions of Indians who have Aadhar cards who do not know what it’s good for. Instead we have a plethora of confusing options to prove we are who we are as the Daily Mail lists.

These include passport, PAN card, ration/PDS card, voter identity card, driving license, government photo ID card, NREGS job card, photo ID issued by a recognised educational institution, arms license, photo bank ATM card, photo credit card, pensioner photo card, freedom-fighter photo card, kisan photo passbook, CGHS/ex-servicemen contributory health scheme card, and a certificate of identity with a photo issued by a Group-A gazetted officer on his letterhead.

And with a new government in power, and Aadhar out of favour, we can expect some more to be added to the mix.

Meanwhile the bank keeps sending me KYC reminders even after I turn in my KYC. “Oh just ignore it if you already sent it,” the smiling official tells me. But why can’t you remember that I already did and not confuse me by sending me urgent SMSes threatening impending closure of my account?

“The system doesn’t allow it,” the official says airily.

The system is the enemy of simplification. Multiple accounts with the same bank result in multiple customer numbers (and the retinue of PINs and passwords that implies) instead of a one-point entry as a Google-world would like.

Add to that Indians’ natural instinct to shop for the cheapest bargain which means standardization and interoperability both become nightmares. There will be Google-world and Apple-world and then a cheaper pirated Jugaad-world out there which cannot talk to either. We like to cut corners because for such an old civilization we are cheerfully shortsighted.

When the great Y2K fear happened at the turn of the century and the “developed world” was afraid their wired lives would crash to a halt and even their garage doors would not open, many thought that it was wise to spend December 31 1999 in India because no matter what happened. India, a country where redundancy is hardwired, would surely still work on 1/1/00.

Perhaps in the sci-fi future where Google-worlds and Apple-worlds become a reality, India too will be a refuge, the last bastion of those who want to check out of utopia.