As the world rallies around the International Privacy Day with activities of creating awareness about Privacy, India awaits the beginning of the budget session in the next couple of days with the hope that the long awaited Data Protection Act is passed by the Parliament.
The Personal Data Protection Bill has been in the Parliament in different versions since 2006. The new versions post Supreme Court decision of 2017 and the Justice Srikrishna Committee report in the form of PDPB 2018 and PDPB 2019 is now back in an updated version as Data Protection Act (DPA 2021).
Data Privacy legislation is a complex legislation that has a huge impact on the industry as well as the functioning of the Government. Privacy activists always like to have a law that allows for little freedom to Government or the Business to make any use of personal data either for national security nor for business considerations.
The recent decisions of the EDPB in directing the Europol to delete substantial parts of the surveillance data held by them and further passing adverse order on the EU Parliament itself for allowing data transfer from EU to US, indicate a tendency of the regulators to get carried away with their own thought process of “Privacy Above All”.
But it is necessary for all Privacy enthusiasts including the regulators to retain their feet on the ground and remember that no legislation can ignore that the law has to maintain harmony between different rights such as Right to freedom of information, Right to security. Individuals whose privacy needs to be protected have to accommodate the existence of other citizens who are concerned about the security of the state and also the right of the business to exist and grow.
Several of the observers in India were critical of the constitution of the selection committee of the DPA in the earlier version of the Bill. They felt that there is a need for a completely independent authority who can take on the Government if required. However, the developments with the EDPB appears to indicate that “Unlimited power with the DPA” is a danger by itself and if the powers are not balanced, there is a danger of the DPA becoming an Anti India institution.
Fortunately the DPA 2021 tries to understand this need of the society and tries to balance the needs of the different stake holders.
Let us therefore enjoy a balanced view of Privacy as is projected by the DPA 2021.
Naavi
