The 2014 Bill recognizes the Right to Privacy as a part of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution and extends to the whole of India
Surabhi Agarwal | New Delhi April 1, 2014 Last Updated at 19:12 IST
Read more on: Surveillance | Interception | Privacy Bill | Niira Radia | Right To Privacy
Fiscal deficit likely to be within 5.1% in FY14: Citi
Inflation-warrior Rajan hits pause button on interest rates
After four to five attempts in the past, the government's latest draft of the Privacy Bill is being called a refined one by experts even though it creates some wide exceptions for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to collect personal information of individuals.
While the first draft of the Bill released in 2011 extended the Right to Privacy to citizens of India, the 2014 version has expanded its ambit to cover all residents of the country. The 2014 Bill also recognizes the Right to Privacy as a part of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution and extends to the whole of India. The 2011 draft Bill did not explicitly recognize the Right to Privacy as being a part of Article 21, and had excluded Jammu & Kashmir from its purview.
ALSO READ: Saving privacy as we knew it
Both the drafts include a list of circumstances under which authorisation for the collection and processing of sensitive personal data is not required. While the list is the broadly the same between the 2011 and 2014 bills, but the latest version exempts insurance company and Government Intelligence agencies which are collecting or processing data "in the interest of the sovereignty, integrity, security or the strategic, scientific or economic interest of India."
A Bangalore based Internet think-tank Centre for Internet and Society said it welcomes many of the changes that are reflected in the Privacy Bill 2014. However, it is cautious about the wide exceptions that have been carved out for law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the Bill.
"The 2014 Bill carves out another exception for Government agencies, allowing disclosure of sensitive personal data without consent to Government agencies mandated under law for the purposes of verification of identity, or for prevention, detection, investigation including cyber incidents, prosecution, and punishment of offences," Centre for Internet and Society said a note analyzing the provisions of the Bill.
The privacy Bill was originally conceptualised to ensure that data collected by the government under various new projects such as Aadhaar or the National Information Grid (NATGRID) is not misused in any way. But following incidents such as the tapping of phone conversations involving lobbyist Niira Radia prompted the government to expand the ambit of the privacy law from just being a data protection law to also cover surveillance and interception.
However, it was unable to reach a consensus due to inter-ministerial conflicts as the law was superseding various provisions under several existing legislations. The government also a committee under retired Delhi High Court Judge Ajit P. Shah in the aegis of the Planning Commission to study international best practices on privacy and surveillance. This committee submitted a report in 2012.
Some noteworthy additions to the new Bill include the term personal identifier which is defined by any unique alphanumeric sequence of members, letters, and symbols that specifically identifies an individual with a database or a data set.
The current Bill has also re-defined, sensitive personal data to denote personal data relating to physical and mental health including medical history, biometric, bodily or genetic information, criminal convictions, password, banking credit and financial data, narco analysis or polygraph test data and sexual orientation.
Once a privacy law comes into being, the government or a private agency will have to adequately inform citizens before collecting data, stating the reasons and only collecting as much information as is necessary for the purpose. It will also have to clearly define the time period for which the data will be stored and the security measures taken to protect the data from misuse. The law also lays down the penalties in case of a breach.
Read more on: Surveillance | Interception | Privacy Bill | Niira Radia | Right To Privacy
