Director Aaron Sorkin, from left, Mikey Madison, and Jeremy Allen White pose for photographers upon arrival at the gala screening for the film "The Social Reckoning" in London, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Is the Kids Online Safety Act the ‘Social Reckoning’ We Are Looking For?

A supporter of opposition presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro attends an Independence Day event the month before the general election in São Paulo, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

A supporter of opposition presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro attends an Independence Day event the month before the general election in São Paulo, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

On Eve of Brazil Elections, Meta Content Moderation Decisions Raise Questions

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers a speech at the annual State of the European Union at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Wednesday, Sept 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Pascal Bastien)

A Safer Internet Should Not Come with Democratic Shortcuts

Closed black iron gates adorned with golden wings and lanterns on each side in front of a grand university building surrounded by green grass.

Gates of the Royal Airforce College in Cranwell, UK in 2011. Adapted from 

Universities Need AI Infrastructure. They Don’t Need AI Lock-In

A hand is laid flat on the surface of a wooden classroom desk covered in children's scribbles and etchings, as a hand belonging to another person paints a blue ink mark on the index finger of the other hand. 

A voter puts his hand on a classroom desk as a polling officer applies indelible ink mark on his index finger at a polling station in a school in Kerala, India on April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

A Misguided Tech Solution is Putting India's Electoral Integrity at Risk

What Counts as Scientific Research? The EU’s Digital Omnibus Could Set the Definition

A collage of images of hands with index fingers in pointing position and squiggly lines.

AI Transparency Starts With the Audience

Illustration from a screenshot of Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s July 14, 2026, deposition.

Illustration from a screenshot of Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s July 14, 2026, 

Eight Years On, Cambridge Analytica Scandal Catches Up With Meta in Santa Fe

Shattered black glass with some pixelated white and colored lights shining through.

Photo of a broken laptop screen, by Leon Brocard on 

Artificial or ‘Super Intelligent’? The Broken Metaphors of AI

Sam Altman (seated on top right end), CEO of OpenAI, arrives to speak at a UN Security Council meeting on Artificial Intelligence during the 81st United Nations General Assembly, United Nations Headquarters, NY, September 23, 2026. (Photo by Anthony Behar/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

What Non-Western Governments Said About AI at the UN

A massive ship loaded with several dozen yellow trucks is docked by a port. A cement truck is lifted above the ground by a loading crane. The name of the ship is Chinafrie Happiness. This is written with white letters on the side of the ship. 

Chinese engineering vehicles are loaded onto a China-Africa liner at Yantai Port in Shandong Province for export to Africa on April 27, 2026. (Photo by Costfoto/NurPhoto via AP)

How China-Africa Relations Are Shaping the Geopolitics of AI

The US Capitol is seen Friday, Sept. 25, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Google Ad Tech Remedies Show Need for Legislation

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media at Parliament House on September 8, 2026 in Canberra, Australia. The Albanese government is preparing new digital duty of care laws that would require digital platforms to take greater responsibility for preventing and addressing online harms. (Photo by Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images)

Australia Wants an Off Switch for 'The Algorithm.' That's the Wrong Fix

CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman speaks during a United Nations Security Council meeting on artificial intelligence and international security under “Maintenance of International Peace and Security” on September 23, 2026 in New York City. Tech industry leaders including the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic and Hugging Face briefed ambassadors on the risks of artificial intelligence. (Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

At the UN and in Washington, Leaders Clash on Approach to AI

People walk past posters encouraging participation in the 2020 Census, Wednesday, April 1, 2020, in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

The 'Jenga Politics' Threatening the US Census

Activists dressed as queer versions of Gandalf, the character from Lord of the Rings, protest with a robotic pet Peter Thiel outside the headquarters of German publishing giant Axel Springer on September 24, 2026 in Berlin, Germany. Thiel, a Lord of the Rings enthusiast as well as an entrepreneur and investor who co-founded PayPal and Palantir, received an aware from Axel Springer. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Gil Durán Maps the Rise of the 'Nerd Reich'

Maddie Freeman stands with her back turned to the side, in front of a billboard advertising her social media detox movement, with a deep blue sky in the background. The text on the billboard says "Get off your phone. Join our Free Tech Detox Movement. NoSoNovember.org". 

Maddie Freeman stands in front of a billboard advertising her social media detox movement, “No Social Media November”, in Denver, Colorado in 2005 (Photo credit: Maddie Freeman)

Meta’s Settlement Deal Won’t Give Me Back the Years I Lost to Social Media

Lord Tom Watson, former Labour deputy leader, speaks to the media on Wednesday January 22, 2025. (Press Association via AP Images)

Palantir's New Senior VP Swaps Lords Pass for Labour Leverage

Illustrative photo captured during the plenary session of October 2025 in Strasbourg, France.

“Behind the scenes - European Parliament in Strasbourg” by 

Europe’s Digital Sovereignty Agenda Must Include Digital Public Infrastructure

Thousands of people dressed in green and yellow rally on a street holding Brazilian flags and a giant balloon shaped like Donald Trump holding a smaller balloon shaped like President Lula wearing a prison uniform. 

Supporters of presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro with a President Trump inflatable, holding a doll of President Lula in a prison unifom, during an Independence Day rally in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

Brazil’s Presidential Candidates Give Digital Sovereignty Many Meanings

A supporter of opposition presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro attends an Independence Day event the month before the general election in Sao Paulo, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

 Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign page from running political ads. The company 

 the restriction occurred because “some of its activities don’t follow our rules”, but did not specify which activities, or which rules. Lula’s Workers’ Party 

 with the company, and the restriction has since been lifted.

Lula is running for reelection against Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator and the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is now serving a prison sentence for an attempted coup d’état. “In practice, this is not only about the incalculable damage to the candidate and the elections, but the favoritism of his political opponents in the electoral process,” wrote the Workers’ Party campaign in its appeal to Meta. Tech Policy Press reached out to Meta for comment on the incident, but received no response by the time of publication.

The restriction on Lula’s campaign page followed another concerning content moderation decision by Meta on the same day. Last Wednesday morning, Meta took down an Instagram profile that had just the day before published a 

 about alleged connections between Flávio Bolsonaro and political scandals, including ties to a banker being 

 for the largest financial fraud in Brazilian history.

, which operates the Instagram profile that was taken down, is a project led by 

, a weekly podcast hosted by journalists Alessandra Orofino, Bruno Torturra and Gregorio Duvivier, together with two other independent news organizations.

Meta gave no explanation for the takedown, stating simply that the video violated its community guidelines, according to 

. After hours of public outcry and backlash against the company, the profile came back online in the middle of the afternoon. In response to an earlier set of questions sent by Tech Policy Press about this incident, Meta said only that “after internal review, the account mentioned in the report was restored. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

These two moderation decisions involving high profile candidates come amid a flurry of other concerning news about potential foreign interference in the elections by outside actors. Last Tuesday, the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo 

 that a group of right-wing influencers connected to United States President Donald Trump, including former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, have been paying to promote posts showing Flávio Bolsonaro taking a lead in Polymarket bets. Although Polymarket is prohibited in Brazil, Bolsonaro and right-wing allies 

Two weeks ago, the Workers’ Party also requested an investigation from the Electoral Court on 

, a group of wealthy conservative donors co-founded by Vice President J.D. Vance, in Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign. On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week, Trump 

 to designate 24 criminal groups, including two Brazilian factions, as foreign terrorist groups, as Flávio Bolsonaro had petitioned Trump to do. 

The action against Lula’s campaign page prompted many of his supporters to raise concerns around censorship. And one of the removed Instagram video’s authors called Meta’s decision—just 12 days before Brazilians head to polls to choose their next president—a 

 running for Congress, called it an act of foreign interference in Brazil’s electoral process.

The video posted on Instagram was a short teaser, linking to the 

 hosted on YouTube, which had reached the top of the ‘Hype’ ranking in less than 24 hours and was not removed. As of Thursday morning, the two teaser videos on Instagram had nearly 25 million views.

“The video script was the result of rigorous work from journalists, researchers, fact-checkers and a legal department,” Bruno Torturra, the editor at 

told Tech Policy Press. He added that the takedown was not preceded by any warnings, with a standard message sent after the profile had already been excluded.

“The video was not a campaign, it was not libel, not guesswork, it was a list of facts, all amply reported by the press and explained in an accessible format to everyone,” said Fábio Porchat, a comedian from the group 

“We showed the narrow relationships that exist between politicians like Flávio Bolsonaro, Nikolas Ferreira, the 

Baptist Church, Daniel Vorcaro and the Supreme Court of Justice,” he said. “After lots of pressure, the page came back online, but we don’t know for how long.”

In May, The Intercept Brasil published a bombshell investigation about 

, a banker currently under investigation for what has been dubbed as the biggest financial fraud of the country’s history. Since then, other media outlets have published 

 connecting other politicians, including federal deputy 

 to the banker. Many of these connections can be traced back to 

, a baptist church in the state of Minas Gerais.

 profile was taken down by Meta, there was outcry from Brazilian users, including artists, 

, with many calling Meta’s decision censorship. Many also raised questions about whether this episode can be considered foreign interference. The episode has sparked questions about sovereignty, freedom of expression, and the limits of big tech’s decisions amid electoral processes.

“Beyond the story told in the video, this case reveals another scandal: Meta’s arbitrary, opaque, and disproportionate power over the national media landscape”, said Torturra. “It also highlights a central issue for the State and society to consider: can we speak of freedom of expression on social media without algorithmic transparency? Is the press truly free when subject to unwritten rules? To codes over which we have absolutely no editorial control or influence? To the whims of nameless executives?” he added.

Torturra said the group is now working on a script for an upcoming video about platforms, digital sovereignty and the privatization of freedom of expression.

Last Wednesday afternoon, Ctrl+Z, a Brazilian nonprofit organization focused on big tech accountability, 

 the Federal Prosecution Service to investigate Meta and demand the company detail the reasons behind the removal of the Instagram account. (Tatiana Dias, a program director at Ctrl+Z, is a fellow at Tech Policy Press.) The case was distributed to the Regional Prosecutor's Office for Citizens' Rights in São Paulo and a prosecutor has been assigned to it, according to confirmation from the press office.

“The removal of an established journalistic profile—with a track record, an audience, and editorial partnerships—without specifying the particular rule allegedly violated runs counter to the duty of transparency and due process that the Supreme Federal Court’s own jurisprudence has come to require of platforms, and it frustrates the right of the user and the public to know and contest the grounds for such a severe measure,” Ctrl+Z wrote in its request.

In addition to Ctrl+Z, federal deputy Orlando Silva, the former rapporteur of Brazil’s 

 the Federal Prosecution Service investigate Meta over its decision to shut down the profile.

 profile is not an isolated event, explained Luã Cruz, director of strategic litigation at Ctrl+Z. Over the past few months, the organization has been tracking cases of censorship to newsrooms and individual journalists.

“We understand this is another action by Meta like others that have been happening, and more strongly after Trump took power, after Zuckerberg changed Meta’s content moderation policies, with the use of AI, and the lack of explanation to users who have their accounts taken down or banned,” said Cruz.

If this weren’t a case involving famous actors, with wide media coverage, it would likely fall “into the limbo,” like many other businesses, he pointed out.

“We can't have this ‘black box’ situation where content of such great importance goes offline—without us knowing why—and then comes back online—again, without us knowing why, or how it returned, what the decision or reason was, or what the process was that caused the account to be taken down and subsequently restored,” he added.

 address by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen drew a bated breath for many in the digital rights community, as we awaited the announcement of the 

, new legislation aimed at creating a safer online environment for minors.

The online space offers young people the chance for connection and exploration, but it also exposes them to significant risks of 

, among other recognized harms. The proposal is a response to wide-reaching calls from Member States and the general public for 

 to address these well-documented online harms, but the devil will be in the details.

As a new addition to the EU's digital rulebook, the proposal also arrives amidst growing institutional pushback against, and in some cases dismantling of, fundamental rights protections in some of the EU’s defining digital rules.

A worrying democratic backsliding on key digital files

The ink was barely dry on the EU AI Act before the 

 was introduced and pushed through the legislative process under an expedited procedure. The projected ‘tension’ between enforcing risk-based rules and championing innovation placed key fundamental rights protections first on the chopping block.

Civil society organizations successfully pushed back on the worst proposed changes, but many aspects were still 

. The central pillar of data protection rules — the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — risks having key provisions on personal data be undermined through 

changes on how highly technical concepts such as pseudonymization should be interpreted

 and a wider mandate for AI-related data processing.

Most publicly, the European Parliament President enacted an 

urgent procedure to pass a vote on the lapsed e-privacy derogation

, commonly known as Chat Control. The Parliament had previously voted down the framework twice because of the prevailing rights concerns many civil society groups 

. This wave of procedural backsliding has led many to hold a pessimistic view of when and how best public interest advocates can continue to push to ensure that the EU’s evolving digital rules uphold our fundamental rights.

The concern is that, despite this welcome step forward in addressing online safety for minors, this new proposal falls into the same pattern of EU tech policies being shaped outside democratic due process. Amid the European Commission’s push for simplification of digital rules, procedural mechanisms to ensure transparent and multi-stakeholder engagement in policymaking are being undermined, and the adoption of the Act is no different.

Although debate on child safety online has been ongoing for months, and several member states have taken matters into their own hands by introducing a 

, it can be argued that the Commission had little choice but to propose the new KIDS Act.

The Commission President took the diligent step of establishing a special panel to develop a report with recommendations for EU action, informed by notable experts in the field. Despite many of the 

 of the report being embedded throughout the proposal, this does not negate the lack of impact assessment and stakeholder consultation, which are essential requirements of the 

 of a similar law in France should have reinforced the need for diligent assessment and stakeholder engagement, not justified sidestepping these procedures.

This is all the more necessary given that the proposal explicitly aims to turn the 

Digital Services Act’s Article 28 Guidelines

 into ‘hard law’ through this new law, only strengthening the argument that the extensive consultation process that led to the development of the guidelines should have been mirrored in the knowledge that these non-binding measures are to become binding legal obligations. This embrace of procedural sidestepping is all the more concerning given the wide-ranging fundamental rights implications of the proposal.

Good intentions, but fundamental rights must be balanced

For many civil society groups, the proposal has caused mixed reactions. On the surface, the fact that the European Commission is not proposing a blanket social media ban is appreciated. As conveyed by the 

, bans and age restrictions are blunt legislative tools that fail to address the core issue of platform safety. 

The proposal, which is highly complex, incorporates safety-by-design measures that many advocates have 

 to addressing the online harms that not only young people, but all users and democracy at large, continue to face. Still, the draft proposal includes far-reaching age verification and age assurance requirements which undermine this more measured approach.

Advocates have long stressed the concerns for many existing age assurance tools, outlining a more 

 for lawmakers to consider. At the heart of the European Commission’s proposal is a reliance on the EU’s age verification scheme, with zero-knowledge proof presented as the privacy-preserving gold standard. 

, however, that zero-knowledge proof is not a silver-bullet solution and has its 

. The proposal also envisages parental oversight via an app, which itself will require confirmation of guardianship, thereby adding another layer of ID verification for parents.

From a free expression perspective, there are questions as to whether the proposal respects the right to free expression and access to information for children under the age of 13, 

which are rights they maintain and should still safely enjoy

 about an age-gated internet, especially for users from marginalized communities. For teens aged 13-15, ‘mini’ accounts with limited features are available, but parents can monitor account activity. Whether teens can freely enjoy these rights under the premise of parental monitoring is also a concern. Whether parents generally support this approach, given 

 preference for more personal choice, remains to be seen.

In short, the solution on the table, despite having some welcome aspects, may unintentionally undermine the fundamental rights of not only children, but all online users. Given this, concerns about legislative shortcuts and expedited procedures, where opportunities for public debate and expert consultation are reduced, are simply unacceptable; the issues this law aims to address and its potential impact are simply far too important.

Getting the process right: democratic oversight must come first

As this law moves forward, public consultation and democratic scrutiny will need to be forefront. Children and young people, expert civil society and public interest technologists must be extensively consulted if this law is going to land where we hope it eventually will; as a complementary framework to laws like the Digital Services Act and the upcoming Digital Fairness Act, that truly protects all communities online.

Strengthening measures to ensure platforms meaningfully mitigate the harms they have thus far failed to address, while respecting the privacy and expression rights of children and all users, is critical. As the 

 “Europe has the power to act, and it is we who decide our rules.

” The EU also has an obligation to establish these rules through an open, democratic process, informed by relevant expertise.

Universities are moving rapidly from debating artificial intelligence to buying it. That shift is understandable. Students already use generative AI extensively, employers increasingly expect graduates to understand it, and leaving access to the best systems dependent on who can afford which commercial subscriptions creates obvious problems of imbalance.

In the United Kingdom, Universities UK has now 

 for AI tools to be accessible to every undergraduate student. In Australia, UNSW Sydney has 

 one of the largest higher education deployments in the Asia-Pacific region, providing ChatGPT Edu to more than 80,000 students and staff.

These initiatives point toward a future in which institutional access to AI becomes as normal as access to a learning management system, academic databases or university email.

Universities do need AI infrastructure. But they do not need AI lock-in.

That distinction is becoming urgent because universities risk treating AI procurement as though they were buying another piece of software. Generative AI is developing into something considerably more consequential: a computational layer through which students learn, academics research and professional staff increasingly perform institutional work.

A procurement decision can gradually become an institutional architecture.

UNESCO put this problem unusually clearly on the international policy agenda in September. At its 

 in Paris, education ministers called for AI systems used in education to be auditable, for data to remain portable and for education systems to consider the total costs of ownership before adopting AI. The resulting ministerial 

 explicitly favors interoperability, portability, and open-source systems so that education systems retain the ability to change course.

The important principle can be expressed more simply: institutions need to be able to leave.

This is not an argument against commercial AI providers. Universities need access to capable systems, and institutionally managed versions of commercial products can provide significant advantages over consumer accounts in security, privacy, administration and equitable access.

The problem comes when access becomes dependence. Consider what happens over several years after a university selects a preferred AI platform. Staff develop workflows around it. Students learn through it. Bespoke assistants are created inside it. Institutional knowledge accumulates within it. Other university systems are connected to it. Eventually, AI agents may begin initiating actions across those systems.

At that point, changing providers is no longer comparable to replacing a software license. The institution must unwind an ecosystem. This is a familiar feature of 

: the value of a platform increases as more activity takes place within it, while the cost of leaving rises at the same time.

 with learning management systems, cloud infrastructure, academic publishing and research analytics. AI potentially intensifies it because the technology is not simply storing information or providing access to content. Increasingly, it is mediating the work itself.

The relevant procurement question is therefore changing. It is no longer only, “which AI system offers the best capabilities today?” Universities also need to ask, “what architecture preserves our ability to choose differently tomorrow?”

The university should control the layer above the model

UNSW offers an interesting glimpse of one possible answer. Alongside its large OpenAI deployment, the university says it is developing a multi-model AI environment in which students and staff can experiment with different AI systems as the technology evolves. That may ultimately prove more strategically important than the ChatGPT agreement itself.

The objective for universities should be to separate their institutional AI environment from any individual model operating within it.

An institutionally governed layer could establish common rules for identity, data access, security, privacy, and appropriate use while allowing different AI models to operate underneath. A university might use one model for particular research tasks, another for coding, and another for routine administrative work. Those choices could change as technology, cost, and evidence change.

Today’s leading model may not be tomorrow’s. Universities should be positioned to benefit from competition between providers rather than finding themselves locked into the winner of a procurement exercise conducted several years earlier.

This principle matters beyond higher education. Public institutions are under increasing pressure to adopt AI while a small number of companies control many of the most capable models and the cloud infrastructure on which they depend. Will Stronge, chief executive at the Autonomy Institute, has recently pushed the argument further, describing the AI systems through which students increasingly think and research as a form of “

” and arguing that questions of ownership and control therefore belong at the heart of educational policy.

Universities do not need to wait for publicly owned foundation models to act on that insight. The immediate policy challenge is to create conditions under which institutions can adopt commercial AI without surrendering technological agency. Interoperability and portability consequently become governance issues rather than technical preferences.

When platforms begin to exercise institutional authority

There is a second reason universities should care about the architecture they are constructing: AI systems increasingly do more than generate text.

 with AI in student support, research, administration, assessment, recruitment, and the identification of students considered at risk. The development of AI agents will push this further because systems will increasingly be capable not merely of recommending actions but of initiating workflows.

Imagine a university uses an AI-enabled system to identify students at risk of dropping out. Formally, the algorithm may make only a recommendation. A human member of staff retains responsibility for deciding whether intervention is required. But suppose staff accept the recommendation almost every time. Where does the decision actually sit?

The university can truthfully maintain that a human remains “in the loop” while the technical system increasingly determines which students attract institutional attention. Authority can migrate without any formal decision to transfer it.

The same process occurs through more mundane technical choices. A university regulation might give academics discretion over appropriate AI use in assessment, while the rule experienced by students is implemented through settings inside a learning management system: AI permitted here, prohibited there, one application accessible and another blocked.

Institutional policy is translated into permissions, defaults, interfaces, and automated workflows.

: institutional authority exercised partly through technical systems rather than exclusively through conventional rules and human decisions. That makes the question of who controls university AI infrastructure inseparable from the question of who governs the university. 

 needs to move beyond AI principles. Many universities responded to generative AI by producing guidance. That was sensible when the principal institutional problem appeared to be how students and staff should use ChatGPT. It is increasingly inadequate when AI becomes infrastructure. Universities now need governance capable of answering a different set of questions. Which AI systems operate within the institution? What information can they access? Which other systems can they interact with? Which decisions do they inform? Who authorized those uses? Can their outputs be audited? When must a human intervene? What happens when a model changes? And what is the exit plan if a supplier no longer serves the institution’s interests?

These are not questions for an IT department alone. They involve procurement, academic governance, information security, data protection, research ethics, employment relations, student representation, and senior institutional leadership.

Nor can they be answered simply by creating another AI ethics committee. The governance has to reach the technical architecture itself. Procurement requirements can mandate portability. Data architecture can restrict what models can access. Institutional AI gateways can provide multiple models through common controls. Logging can make automated activity auditable. Governance processes can establish where human judgment must remain decisive.

In other words, principles have to become infrastructure.

Universities should also be cautious about allowing the urgency of AI adoption to reverse the appropriate sequence of governance. The pattern too often is: procure a system, distribute access, encourage experimentation, then work out how to govern what follows. The more sustainable sequence is governance architecture first, scalable adoption second.

None of this requires universities to become AI skeptics. The opposite may be true. Institutions with strong governance should be able to adopt AI more confidently because they know where responsibility lies and have reduced the consequences of any individual technology failing.

Universal access to capable AI could become an important part of higher education. Students should graduate understanding how to use these systems critically and professionally. Researchers should be able to exploit rapidly improving tools. Universities should seek productivity improvements in administration rather than preserving inefficient processes simply because they are familiar.

 need not be opposites. The most important AI decision university leaders make over the next few years may therefore not be whether to choose ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot or whatever comes next; it will be whether they build an institutional architecture in which those remain choices.

The real test of a university’s AI strategy is not which model it buys in 2026. It is whether it will still be free to choose in 2030.

Amber Sinha is a contributing editor at Tech Policy Press.


A mounting controversy surrounding efforts to technically centralize and deduplicate India’s electoral rolls reached new heights last week 

 that the Election Commission of India (ECI) repeatedly overrode the formal objections of two election commissioners, who saw “unauthorized” and “illegal” handling of voter records.

 for the Modi Government in a difficult year.

 filed by the election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, between Oct. 2025 and Aug. 2026 against the 

chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar

, raise serious questions about the undemocratic functioning of one of India’s most protected institutions, which handles numerous local elections in any given year. 

While internal bureaucratic friction is not entirely new within statutory bodies, the substance of these objections is alarming. It shines a light on trends within India’s electoral management that have been previously discussed on Tech Policy Press 

 (2025): the technological centralization of digital electoral infrastructure.

Indian state has been captivated by the allure of techno-solutionism

. There is a widely shared belief that complex socio-political challenges can be neatly resolved through digital databases and algorithmic engineering. Within the context of electoral management, we have seen this manifest previously in the

, undertaken in limited, albeit devastating, ways. As for instance, when the 

National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP) 

sought to link voter IDs with biometric Aadhaar ID data to weed out duplicates in 2015. Before the Supreme Court 

, this centralized, algorithmic matching resulted in the deletion of millions of voters without due process, disproportionately affecting marginalized communities whose digital legibility is often fraught.

The current update of the electoral rolls—the 

began in 2025 and does not merely repeat these past mistakes; it takes the ideology of database ‘purification’ to its logical, unchecked conclusion. By shifting the locus of control away from local administrations and into a centralized software architecture, the ECI has effectively hardcoded disenfranchisement into its processes.

The key technological product in this shift is the 

 introduced in January 2026. Historically, the strength and resilience of India’s electoral machinery have relied heavily on its 

. Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Booth Level Officers (BLOs) are the backbone of this system. They possess the vital, granular, contextual knowledge necessary to verify voter status on the ground. When discrepancies arise, these local officials conduct physical verifications, hold hearings, and make nuanced administrative decisions based on lived realities rather than rigid database parameters.

The centralization of ECINet circumvents these time-established practices. As highlighted this week by 

Latest

Podcast

Recent

Our content delivered to your inbox

Thank you!

Around the globe