Rising concerns on India’s Privacy law

The government has withdrawn the Personal Data Protection Bill from Parliament as it considers a “comprehensive legal framework” to regulate the online space, including bringing separate laws on data privacy, the overall Internet ecosystem, cybersecurity, telecom regulations, and harnessing non-personal data to boost innovation in the country. This move comes as the policy makers have received dozens of amendments and recommendations from a parliamentary panel, which includes lawmakers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party, that “identified many issues that were relevant but beyond the scope of a modern digital privacy law.

The Personal Data Protection Bill is sought to empower Indian citizens with rights relating to their data. India, the world’s second-largest internet market, has seen an explosion of personal data in the past decade as hundreds of citizens came online for the first time and started consuming scores of apps. But there has been uncertainty on how much power the individuals, private companies and government agencies have over it.

There was a growing concern from the Indian law enforcement who had long taken issue with the mechanism for getting crime-related information from US tech companies; because Indian requests to the US were so backlogged, many Indian law enforcement agencies saw local data storage requirements as a way to ensure they could get information on crimes.

Recently, the department has come out with a clear policy on imposing regulations targeting social media companies, internet news services, and other firms – including new legislation that requires VPNs to store user data and IP addresses for five years – seeking to increase its control over and surveillance of the online space.

Essentially, Meta, Google and Amazon were some of the companies that had expressed concerns about some of the recommendations by the joint parliamentary committee on the proposed bill. The bill also mandated that companies may only store certain categories of “sensitive” and “critical” data, including financial, health and biometric information in India.

As per the sources, it has plans to introduce the Digital India Act, that will focus on everything from children’s and women’s safety to digital crime to content spread via over-the-top media services like Amazon Prime and Netflix.

Home to more internet shutdowns than any other country on earth, however – including a longstanding internet shutdown meshed with other human rights abuses in Kashmir– India’s credibility on digital democratic regulation is limited under the current government.

There will be a wait and watch until the new law is going to come out and it is going to influence the global privacy landscape.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA