The Planning Commission of the Government of India held meetings of the Expert Group on Data Protection Issues in 2012. The panel was chaired by Justice AP Shah, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. This report contains a list of recommended national data protection principles that should be followed when creating a data protection law. According to the report, India`s national data protection principles should be as follows: In 2017, the Supreme Court of India issued a landmark decision declaring the right to privacy as a fundamental right under the right to life (Article 21) under our Constitution. However, there is no independent and comprehensive data protection law in India. Currently, the Information Technology Act 2000, with additional rules, serves as a legal cornerstone to ensure the protection of personal data. India is a party to two international privacy instruments. These are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 12) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 17). The technologically advanced era we live in has both positive and negative effects on us. It has raised both ethical and legal issues that are new and different from the old ones. Some of the challenges we face right now pose the greatest threat to privacy rights, legislators and regulators are increasingly recognizing the importance of data for economic and technological growth.
Therefore, 2021 saw significant developments in the field of data protection and personal data protection in various sectors. In August 2021, case law on data protection rights management was formulated. The Madras High Court rejected an applicant`s right to be forgotten and requested that his criminal record be removed from the case after his acquittal. The court dismissed the person because the performance of a task in the public interest outweighed the individual`s right to privacy. The court further stated that these rights would be implemented more effectively after India passed a data protection law. The Supreme Court`s decision also upholds the decisions taken after Kharak Singh on data protection, subject to the aforementioned conditions. Therefore, it is important to understand the contours of the right to privacy and its limits in India compared to the other existing jurisdiction: The IRDA (Third Party Administrators – Health Services) regulations establish regulatory guidelines for “Third Party Administrators” (TPAs). TPAs must comply with a code of conduct in order to obtain a permit from IRDA. The distinctive features of the Code of Conduct relating to the protection of health information require TPAs to refrain from negotiating information and records relating to their activities, to maintain the confidentiality of the data they collect under their agreement, to maintain appropriate records of all transactions they conduct on behalf of an insurance company, and to retain them for a period of time. period of at least three years. Keep. The government has wasted a lot of time on people`s fundamental right to privacy.
In fact, it is true that privacy is not an absolute fundamental right, and it has been clarified from time to time by the Supreme Court that there may be limitations on this right and that they are necessary because they include protection against misconduct. But when we see the Aarogya Setu app, it is assumed that it is imposed on people by the government, and it is another type of surveillance app that tracks the location of the person. In the midst of the global pandemic, this app was introduced by the Indian government and imposed on companies like zomato, swiggy and many others to force their employees to download the app, and later it became mandatory in shopping malls and other public places. This app has tracked the movements of its user via GPS and also stores the information and data of its users. The question about the app started quickly because there were no clear guidelines from the app and was completely silent in this matter, there was no control and balance in the app and it was only mentioned that the data was encrypted. This raises the question of why this public application is made mandatory. The argument that it was made under the Emergency Preparedness Act is not a sufficient response, as this application violates the fundamental right to privacy and violates privacy in every way. The new IT rule 4 (2) imposed on the social media platform with more than 5 million users the obligation to ensure the traceability of the author of the information. Whatsapp challenges the central government to abide by the “Information Technology (Intermediate Guidelines and Code of Ethics for Digital Media) 2021”, which were notified on 25 February 2021. New IT rules have allowed social media platforms and businesses to give new consent to implement the traceability system, and this is expected to come into effect by May 26, 2021. After Govind, the Supreme Court had to uphold the right to privacy versus the right to freedom of expression in R. Rajagopal v.
State of Tamil Nadu. In the present case, the applicant was a Tamil news magazine which had requested instructions from the court to prevent the respondent State of Tamil Nadu and its officials from interfering in the publication of the autobiography of a death row inmate “Auto Shankar”, which contained details of the link between the criminals and the police. The Supreme Court asked: “Can a citizen of this country prevent another person from writing his life story or biography? Does such an unauthorized letter violate the citizen`s right to privacy? Does the freedom of the press guaranteed by Article 19(1)(a) authorise the press to publish such an unauthorised account of a citizen`s life and activities and, if so, to what extent and under what circumstances? In answering the above questions, a two-judge chamber of the Supreme Court has, for the first time, directly linked the right to privacy to Article 21 of the Constitution, but at the same time excluded publicly available issues from the protection of this “right to privacy”. The Supreme Court stated: “(1) The right to privacy is implicitly enshrined in the right to life and liberty guaranteed to the citizens of this country by section 21. It is a “right to be left alone.” A citizen has the right to protect, inter alia, his privacy, that of his family, marriage, procreation, maternity, birth and education. No one may publish anything on the above matters without their consent, whether truthful or not, and whether commendable or critical. If he does so, he violates the personality rights of the person concerned and would be liable in an action for damages. However, the situation may be different if a person voluntarily dives into a controversy or voluntarily invites or raises a controversy. (2) The above rule is subject to the exception that any publication on the above-mentioned aspects may not be challenged if it is based on public records, including court records. This is because once an issue becomes public, the right to privacy no longer exists and it becomes a legitimate subject of comment from the press and the media, among others.
In 2005, the Supreme Court rendered one of its most significant privacy decisions in District Registrar v. Canara Bank. In that case, the Supreme Court was required to determine the constitutionality of a provision of the PA Stamp Act that allowed the collector or “a person authorized by the collector” to enter any premises to inspect records, records, books and documents in the custody of a public official if such inspection resulted in the discovery of fraud or the non-payment of a fee payable to the government. The main issue in this case concerned the confidentiality of a customer`s records maintained by a financial institution such as a bank. The impugned provision was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on the grounds that it had not met the adequacy criteria set out in articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution. The Court held that any legislation that interferes with a citizen`s personal liberty (in this case, the confidentiality of a citizen`s financial records) must meet the three-step test established by the Supreme Court in Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India. This three-step test requires that any law that infringes the concept of “personal liberty” set out in article 21 must meet certain standards: “(i) it must prescribe a procedure; (ii) the procedure must pass the examination of one or more fundamental rights referred to in Article 19 which may be applicable in a given situation; (iii) it must also be verifiable in accordance with Article 14. The contested provision did not satisfy that criterion. More importantly, the Court held that the concept of privacy refers to the citizen, not the place.
The implication of such a statement was that it did not matter whether financial records were kept in a citizen`s home or in a bank. As long as the financial documents in question belonged to a citizen, those documents would be protected by the citizen`s right to privacy. IS 17428 is the latest standard published by BIS to govern the privacy practices of organizations. This standard provides a framework for establishing, implementing, maintaining and updating privacy management practices. The standard consists of two parts. The first imposes technical and administrative requirements to protect the confidentiality of personal and sensitive data when designing a product or service that would involve the collection of data from an individual. The second part lists some guidelines to improve the implementation of the requirements of Part I of the standard. In this decision, the court explicitly confirmed an individual`s right to data protection and ordered the formation of a special committee to investigate this case as soon as possible and propose a data protection framework to safeguard the right to privacy.
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