Chinese are concerned about privacy, we remain naked fakirs.

"China's communist government has never shown much concern for the privacy of Chinese citizens. If you have something to hide, the thinking goes, we probably need to know it," writes Adam Minter. "In one form or another, surveillance and monitoring have evolved into a well-honed form of social control." Last year 4,261 people were arrested for 1,886 cases related to cases of theft of personal data, leading to a loss of $13.2 billion. With 700 million people online privacy has become a concern. Alipay, a mobile payments system, forces users to sign an agreement giving perpetual rights to reveal personal details to third parties and 44% of Chinese websites had vulnerable security. Last year an 18 year old girl suffered a fatal heart attack when she discovered that she had lost her personal information and tuition. If Chinese companies want to expand overseas the government has to tighten privacy. What about here in India? The Narendra Modi government is forcing every citizen to acquire a biometric identity card, known as Aadhar, by making it mandatory for buying train or plane tickets, for watching cricket matches and even for school exams. Thus the state is collecting information regarding innocent activities of almost every person in the country. Why? This is the basis of a sinister police state. The Attorney General dared to argue in front of the Supreme Court that the Constitution does not give us any right to privacy. Unfortunately our courts take so long to resolve cases that 99% of people over the age of 18 years have already been coerced into acquiring Aadhar cards. Even if judges decide that Aadhar is detrimental to privacy, politicians and civil servants are unlikely to give up all this information which allows them total control over our lives. Modi wants India to become a cashless society which, along with Aadhar, will open up every detail of our lives to the government. Every article we buy, every move we make by bus, plane, train or taxi, every movie we watch or every meal we eat out will be known to those in power. This would have been a dream to the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, the KGB in the Soviet Union and the Stasi in East Germany. Managing big data has many risks, wrote Ernest Davies. Fake news, lack of privacy and lack of accountability are the dangers. Already crucial identity data have been stolen. Our banks are completely open to hacking but deny that they are vulnerable so that they never compensate customers for any loss that they incur due to hacking. Amit Jaju makes recommendations for improving bank security but banks are unlikely to spend money to protect customers. If China had democracy it would be as poor as India, mocked Chinese media. Correct. The Communist Party uses coercion but tries to make the nation rich, our lot masks coercion with handouts. China is rich, we will remain poor.