Multidimensional Surveillance And Public Wi- Fi In Indian Railways: Data Protection, Cyber- Security Vulnerabilities, And State Liability Under Article 21
Roshan Kumar Giri, Campus Law Centre, Faculty of Law, University of Delhi.
ABSTRACT
Indian Railways operates one of the world’ s largest public Wi-Fi deployments, covering 6117 railway stations under the Rail-wire initiative facilitated through Rail-Tel Corporation of India. While this infrastructure has rapidly expanded digital access for millions of computers, it simultaneously creates a formidable architecture of multidimensional surveillance, metadata collection, behavioural tracking, facial recognition integration and real-time data aggregation that intersects extensively with fundamental rights jurisprudence. This paper critically analysis the intersection of public Wi-Fi surveillance in Indian railways with the constitutional guarantee of the right to privacy under article 21 of the constitution of India, as established and crystallized by the nine judges bench of the Supreme Court in Justice K.S Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India (2017). The paper analyses the Cybersecurity vulnerabilities inherent in mass public Wi-Fi infrastructure, the adequacy and lacunae of the existing data protection framework in India, including the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDPA), and the outline of state liability for data breaches and surveillance overreach. It further engages with comparative jurisprudence from the European Union, the United States and Canada to situate India's evolving framework within the global discourse on privacy, surveillance, and state accountability The paper argues that the present surveillance architecture of Indian Railways' public Wi-Fi lacks adequate constitutional legitimacy under the tripartite Puttaswamy test of legality, necessity, and proportionality, and proposes a rights-compliant framework for reform.
Keywords- Article 21- Right to Privacy, Cybersecurity, Mass Surveillance, State Liability, Digital Rights
