By Rajiv Singh, ET Bureau|
Aug 27, 2017, 12.01 AM IST
The SC judgment overturned a 63-year-old ruling that refused to recognise privacy as a fundamental right.
In an increasingly digital world, in which artificial intelligence and big data are converging, there’s ostensibly no place to hide. The state has access (over the cloud) to your dates, dinners, calls, holidays, work, bank account et al. Besides, an expanding ecosystem for your unique ID Aadhaar, linking it with PAN cards, bank accounts, death certificates etc has raised questions on privacy and security — and inevitably prompted numerous WhatsApp quips, including: “We finally know the one thing you will take with you when you die. The Aadhaar number!”
On Thursday, the Supreme Court came to the rescue, ruling that privacy is a fundamental right, protected as an intrinsic part of right to life and personal liberty and as part of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In effect, “the judgment has put the ball in the government’s court to come up with a privacy law,” says cyber law expert Pavan Duggal. The SC judgment impacts state actions on collecting any biometric data and using the same to offer services or linking to multiple other services, like PAN, driving licence, pensions and so on, like in the case of Aadhaar.
However, Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), told agencies that linking of PAN with biometric identifier Aadhaar will continue as previously directed; as will the quoting of the 12-digit ID number for availing various government subsidies. “The SC verdict holding privacy as a fundamental right has in no way stopped the quoting of Aadhaar for various schemes as well as the filing of income tax returns,” says Pandey.
Duggal points out that the SC judgment is monumental and recognises privacy as a fundamental right. “From 2009 to 2016 (almost 1 billion people were enrolled in these seven years), information was being collected based on an executive order. The Aadhaar Act was passed on the presumption that it is voluntary but later its use was being made mandatory. An ecosystem started developing around Aadhaar,” said Duggal.
That ecosystem “is flawed as it does not address cybersecurity, privacy and security of data issues. Government will have to amend the Aadhaar Act,” added Duggal. Pandey, for his part, maintained that the “SC judgment has not said anything about the Aadhaar Act”.
The SC judgment overturned a 63-yearold ruling that refused to recognise privacy as a fundamental right. Since then, much data has been generated and digitised, making it easier for the state to dive deep into citizen’s private lives.
Recognising the challenges, even UIDAI’s first chairman Nandan Nilekani told ET in an interview in late April that India needs an advanced data protection, security and privacy law to deal with the data deluge. The SC judgment could now accelerate that.
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