Another leak of the Srikrishna Committee Report on Data Protection

Even while the Srikrishna Panel has expressed dissatisfaction at TRAI coming up with its own Privacy Protection regulation and a consequential need for revision by the Panel of its draft, Caravan has released a report about a draft copy of the proposed act containing 15 chapters which it has gained access to and released some of its views.

The Caravan article is here

Also see: Economic Times

This article  focusses on  some suggestions reported to have been made by the committee on Aadhaar Act and RTI Act.

It would be appropriate for us to wait for the official release of the draft to make serious comments.

However for the sake of records we can recount the remarks of Caravan.

1. It is said that the draft proposes amendment to Aadhaar act and an “Offline Verification” for Aadhaar.
2. It is also said that the RTI Act is also proposed to be amended with the need for the following three conditions to be fullfilled for the release of Personal data(a) the personal data relates to a function, action or any other activity of the public authority in which transparency is required to be maintained having regard to larger public interest in the accountability of the working of the public authority;(b) if such disclosure is necessary to achieve the object of transparency referred to in clause (a); and

   (c) any harm likely to be caused to data principal by the disclosure is outweighed by the interest of the citizen in obtaining such personal data having regard to the object of transparency referred to in clause (a).

We shall wait for further information to come forth instead of speculating on the above measures as there are more fundamental aspects of the law which may need attention rather than these peripheral issues.

Naavi