India, Aug. 12 -- As India marks its 79th Independence Day, freedom today carries a meaning our founding generation could not have imagined: the freedom to transact, to be heard, to be governed, and to be protected all through a screen.

Seventy-nine years ago, independence gave us freedom from colonial rule and slavery; freedom meant the right to life, equality, the vote, to speak, to own property free from arbitrary seizure. Today, technology has expanded that freedom further; access to the internet is now widely seen as bound up with our fundamental rights.

An equally intimate freedom has entered our lives: the freedom to access services without standing in long queues, without a harsh, impersonal interface standing between citizen an...