Right to Privacy is fundamental right .....Supreme court of India

VARINDIA welcomes the Apex Courts decision on Right to Privacy is fundamental right, it is a historic judgment that privacy is a fundamental right under Article 21, which declared privacy to be a fundamental right, ‘protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty. This verdict comes two days after the court in a landmark judgment struck down the Islamic divorce practice of instant triple talaq as unconstitutional.

The nine-judge bench unanimously ruled that privacy is a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution. The bench, headed by Chief Justice of India J S Khehar, comprised of Justices J Chelameswar, S A Bobde, R K Agrawal, R F Nariman, A M Sapre, D Y Chandrachud, S K Kaul and S Abdul Nazeer. The apex court overruled the previous two judgments in the M P Sharma and Kharak Singh cases, which had ruled that the right to privacy was not protected by the Constitution.

PRIVACY BILLS IN PARLIAMENT

Recently a Bill was introduced in Parliament by BJD's Baijayant Panda proposing to bring privacy under the ambit of legislation. This was not the first Bill on privacy introduced in Parliament. Panda himself had introduced a Bill in 2009 before the UPA-II drafted its Privacy Bill.

Panda's latest attempt through the Data (Privacy and Protection) Bill, 2017 is pending before the Lok Sabha. His previous private member bill was titled the Prevention of Unsolicited Telephonic Calls and Protection of Privacy Bill. It aimed at protecting individuals from receiving unsolicited telephone calls by tele-callers on behalf of business promoters. The Bill states that the individual will have the sole right and the final right to modify or remove personal data from any database, public or private. Panda's Bill seeks to deal the "exceptions" to the right to privacy to be considered on case-by-case basis.

As the world moves towards digitization, citizens must have rights against misuse of information. The most important is now the Telecom companies will have to await fresh instructions from the telecom department (DoT) on possible changes in continuing with Aadhaar-based digital verification for issuing new mobile connections or re-verifying existing customers in the aftermath of the Supreme Court declaring privacy as a citizen’s fundamental right.

Today’s Supreme courts judgement will not impact the ongoing exercise, Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said telcos “anyways do not download sensitive biometric information such as a customer’s retina scans or 10-finger prints from the Aadhaar database onto the customer auquisation form (CAF) while selling new connections or reverifying existing customers".

Trai believes in privacy rights and the rights of ownership of data of the owner, that's the reason why we started this consultation paper on it and it was the reason for floating a consultation paper on security, privacy and ownership of data earlier this month., said R S Sharma, chairperson- TRAI

The regulator has argued that government intervention was needed in data protection and ownership “to prevent harm to consumers”, and added that consumers typically under estimate the value of personal data and the impact of agreeing to share it, while service providers benefit by acquiring and holding on to such data.

In Box : The verdict may have a bearing on the government’s Aadhaar scheme that makes compulsory linking of the unique biometric identity with bank accounts, income tax returns and for availing government benefits.

As technology is playing a greater role in our day-to-day lives. With the data availed in Aadhaar, A million dollar question is on , could the data be misused by any Indian or foreign tech corporates. This judgement will pave the way for securing our rights. Data security is utmost important in this digitally connect world and data becomes expensive than oil. The challenge is on the data-security, Data is a commodity. There are several companies on the large scale, there job is to collect data then to do data mining ( Un-structural data to structural data) by categorised into various format/shape and sell to the corporates across the world.

Secondly, world’s most valuable companies have built their enterprise around the collection and use of data. The Supreme Court acknowledges this. Earlier, this data would provide personalised advertisements and improve services. Eventually, powerful platforms such as Facebook and Google can use this data to shape our understanding of the world and affect our choices. Going forward, the full potential of this right will only be realised by data protection laws that will govern how private companies collect and use data.

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