Untangle The Privacy Law

An overview of India’s efforts to frame the data protection Bill and what has been achieved so far

- Smitha Krishna Prasad

​​​​​​OVER THE LAST WEEK OF JULY, the right to privacy and data protection has once again made headlines in India. On 29 July, reports stated that the proprietors of three small IT companies were arrested in connection with the leak of personal information of over 8 lakh students.

A day before that, on 28 July, the chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), published his Aadhaar number, challenging security researchers to show what harm could be done to him using this number. There has been much debate on the Aadhaar project and its impact on privacy over the past few years. This “challenge” was apparently issued to show that “Aadhaar does not contribute to increasing any of your other digital vulnerabilities”.

Researchers were able to find several pieces of personal information about the TRAI chairman, while pointing out that availability of such information may not harm him, but could be harmful to others.

On 27 July, the long-awaited draft data protection bill and an accompanying report were submitted to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) by a committee of experts.

The incidences of data leaks, and the “challenge” issued by a senior member of government go to show the state of disarray that we see in the general discourse on the value of technology and data. On the other hand, the data protection bill brought with it hope that we could soon be in the leagues of countries that actively work towards protecting the privacy of their people – an important objective at a time when the constant emphasis for rapid ‘innovation’ seems to disregard the need to plan for the long term protection of individuals and their rights.

Right to privacy and data protection

The disparity seen above is reflected in the state of legal protections currently afforded to privacy and data protection in India.