Naavi.org

Naavi has been in the forefront of creating awareness of Cyber Laws in India since 1998. Over the last two decades, Naavi.org has emerged as a treasure house of awareness about Cyber Laws. Additionally Naavi has promoted Cyber Law College through which certification programs have been conducted since 1998 on Cyber Laws and later Data Protection. In the recent days traditional colleges like NLSUI and NALSAR have introduced their own certification programs and Naavi has been associated with the development of such programs also.

Through the institution of FDPPI, Naavi has also set up an NGO to take the Privacy and Data Protection knowledge to the professionals through Certification programs and compliance frameworks for implementation.

Now with the Indian Parliament taking up for debate the new version of the bill PDPB 2021, we are closer than before for the Indian data protection law to be operative. Hence the need for intensifying the activities of FDPPI has arisen.

As a result there is a need to spread the knowledge of Privacy and Data Protection amongst the masses so that a culture where people appreciate the need for and the  limitations of Privacy as a right and Data Protection as a regulatory mechanism and make proper use of the rights provided to them by law.

In this direction, Naavi through Cyber Law College and FDPPI would be undertaking some initiatives in the same manner the Cyber Law Awareness was spread during the period 2000-2010

The first such  outreach program would be the “All India Privacy Awareness Program” to be undertaken by Cyber Law College.  This is meant for ordinary persons who are  not conversant with the concept of Privacy and Data Protection and would  explain the concept of Privacy as a human right, its implications in the data protection domain, the objective of the Data Protection Act, the diverse views of the Privacy Activists and the industry, the aspects of PDPB 2021 relevant for ordinary citizens of the country, etc.

Naavi would be launching the “Privacy and Data Protection For Everyone” campaign shortly to spread the awareness of the provisions of the new PDPB 2021 along with the background and the future trends in Privacy related issues in India.

This joint program of FDPPI and Cyber Law College should help in the absorption of the knowledge of the emerging data protection laws in India.

Watch out for the details.

Naavi

In the new version of PDPA 2021 (We can start calling this DPA 2021 from now onwards) that is replacing PDPB 2019 has indicated under Section 57 that “Obligation to take prompt and appropriate action in response to a data breach under Section 25” would be one of the reasons under which a penalty of upto 2% of Total worldwide turnover or Rs 5 crores can be levied on a data fiduciary.

Section 25 of the  Act states as follows:

Reporting of (***) data breach.

(1) Every data fiduciary shall by notice,(***) report to the Authority about the breach of any personal data processed by (***) such data fiduciary.(***)
(2) The notice referred to in sub-section (1) shall be in such form as may be specified by regulations and include the following particulars, namely:—
(a) nature of personal data which is the subject matter of the breach;
(b) number of data principals affected by (***) such breach;
(c) possible consequences of (***) such breach; and
(d) the remedial actions being taken by the data fiduciary (***) for such breach.
(3) The notice referred to in sub-section (1) shall be (***) issued by the data fiduciary within seventy-two hours of becoming aware of such breach.(***)
(4) Where it is not possible to provide all the information (***) provided in sub-section (2) at the same time, the data fiduciary shall provide such information to the Authority in phases without any undue delay.
(5) (***)
(5)The Authority (***)shall, after taking into account the personal data breach and the severity of harm that may be caused to the data principal, direct the data fiduciary to report such breach to the data principal and take appropriate remedial actions(***) to mitigate such harm and to conspicuously post the details of the personal data breach on its website.
Provided that the Authority may direct the data fiduciary to adopt any urgent measures to remedy such breach or mitigate any harm caused to the data principal.
(7) (***)

(6) The Authority shall, in case of breach of non-personal data, take such necessary steps as may be prescribed.

The obligations under Section 25 subsections (1) to (5)  refer to “Personal Data”.  Sub section (6) empowers the Authority to prescribe necessary steps to be taken in case of Non Personal Data.

At this point of time the bill will therefore be not applicable to the notification of data breach of non personal data beyond what has been prescribed already under ITA 2000.

In the case of Non Personal Data Breach there is no harm caused to a data principal whose privacy is sought to be protected under this law. Hence any action required to be taken is not within the recommendations of the Supreme Court under the Puttaswamy Judgement. This is only an amendment to ITA 2000 and the powers now available to the CERT-IN Director.

This opens up a question on whether administrative fines can be levied for non personal data breach under DPA 2021 and if this provision stays, will it be considered as an “Extraneous Provision” to this law which over rides the powers of the Adjudicator and Appellate tribunal as well as the High Court which have jurisdiction for levying penalty for breach of non personal data under ITA 2000.

The idea that there has to be a single regulator for Personal and Non Personal Data is not a wise idea and this is likely to create confusion both to the judicial authorities as well as for the purpose of compliance.

It would also create one more level of overlap of the functions of a CISO and DPO in an organization since the DPO has to keep track on Non Personal Data Breach also where as the CISO also needs to keep track of Cyber and Information Security issues.

It is still not late for the Government to delete this aspect of data breach notification and also the applicability of the Act to non personal data under Section 2.

Naavi

Other articles on DPA 2021

14. PDPA 2021: Concept of Discovery Consent

13. JPC Recommendations on SWIFT Alternative: Out of scope and Disruptive of Global Economic System

12. JPC recommendation on Children Data

11. JPC recommends DPA to watch on Incident Register

10. JPC comments beyond the Amendments-2: Implementation Schedule

9. JPC comments beyond the Amendments-1-Priority of law

8. Clarifications from the JPC Chairman on DPA 2021

7. Anonymisation is like Encryption with a destroyed decryption key 

6. PDPA 2021: The data breach notification regarding Non Personal Data

5. PDPA 2021: The Data Protection Officer is now in an elevated professional status

4. PDPA 2021: The nature of Data as an Asset and nomination facility

3. PDPA 2021: Regulating the human perceptions

2. PDPA 2021: Definition of Harm to include psychological manipulation

1. PDPA 2021: Should Big Data and Data Analytics industry be worried?

[Indian Economy being killed for the sake of Crypto Currency survival]

According to earlier reports, the Crypto Bill was expected to be discussed by the Cabinet on 15th/16th December 2021.  So far there is no information and it appears that, the Bill was taken out of the agenda under the pretext that it requires further improvements.

It is clear that the Ministry of Finance is not interested in the Bill and hence they are unlikely to declare completion of the work. There will be one excuse after another to postpone the presentation of the Bill until the Government surrenders to the digital black money.

We refer to the report in Moneycontrol.com which provides some information on the developments.

It is also stated that the scope of the bill will be expanded to include regulation of Non Fungible Crypto tokens. (NFTs) This will further assist conversion of white money into black money and create value out of thin air.

Even if by a provision of law use of “Crypto” as “Currency” would be prohibited, once the concept of Crypto as an asset is permitted, there will be ways of tokenizing the crypto asset which is used as an exchange medium. The investments which are today in the stock markets will shift substantially to Crypto assets. This will also give a boost to creating representative Crypto tokens which may be traded. SEBI is known to have already been compromised on the Crypto issue and the attempt to remove RBI from the control is only to ensure that the only opposition to Crypto is eliminated.

If Crypto is allowed as an asset and traded then it will be not long before we have tokenized assets replacing the stocks or Commodities in the market. Instead of buying L& T shares, we can create a Virtual L&T and trade its parts.  These crypto L & T bits need not be backed by any revenue or income and still they will command a premium since there will be an artificial scarcity created through the algorithm.

We are presently hearing of Virtual Taj Mahal as a tradeable asset. Tomorrow there may be a virtual Ayodhya, Virtual Kashi, or Virtual Mathura or a Virtual Kashmir. Imagine the potential of Virtual Kashmir which can be sold and made into a tokenized currency to get global money to fund terrorists.

It would also not be unthinkable to see creation of even a “Virtual Modi” or “Virtual Sachin” or “Virtual Amitabh” as a tokenized asset.

If for example, a logarithmically controlled limited version of “Virtual Modi Crypto Asset” is created and say there will be only 100o original replicas which can be issued as an ICO in a competitive bid with a base price of USD 1 million, then it will surely be bought by some investors. Subsequently they may be resold in smaller units. 1000 original Virtual Modi Cryptos can each be divided into a Million Modi Crypto bits and we will have 1 billion Modi Crypto asset bits to be traded. They can be traded in the stock markets for thousands of rupees/dollars like the Bitcoins of today. They will be bought both by Modi Bhakts and Modi haters for different reasons.

These thoughts may look crazy for the time being but these will certainly happen in the days to come if private Cryptos are given even a small legal opening. (Similar concepts are already available in Virtual Cricket games). Fraudsters and Scamsters will therefore have a field day if Crypto Currencies and NFTs are made legit investments.

It appears that India may win against the Pakistani Terrorists and even the Chinese might but it cannot win the war against Black money. The Crypto currencies and the NFTs are the weapons with which the economic invaders will humble the legit economic systems in India in the days to come.

If we want to protect the country’s economy from going to dogs, we need to say no to all forms of Cryptos and particularly the Private Crypto assets/currencies.

We pray that  Lord Kashi Vishwanatha give courage to Mr Narendra Modi to take on his most powerful enemy namely Black Money in India.

I request Mrs Nirmala Sitharaman to raise above the fear of the unknown and kill Cryptos once and for all. Let India be the global leader in destroying the Crypto currency world. Kindly not be misguided by vested interests who talk of Block Chain as an inevitable technology to sustain the argument for Crypto Currencies. The two can be separated and we can kill Crypto assets without killing the Block Chain technology.

Even the need for official currency is only a cover for keeping the concept of Crypto Currency alive. It makes no economic sense to have an official Crypto currency replace the current virtual currency system we have .

I hope the Cabinet members of Mr Modi’s cabinet show their political willingness to take on the Crypto currencies.

Otherwise we will have only one conclusion that even Mr Modi was powerless against the digital black money and reconcile in anguish Et tu Modi?

Naavi

Also see: NDTV report

The copy of the Bill tabled in the Parliament for Data Protection Act 2021 is now available in its official version.

Kindly check DPA2021  for details.

Naavi

According to information floating around, the Data Protection Bill 2021 which is the next version of PDPB 2019 as modified by the JPC-1 under Mrs Meenakshi Lekhi and JPC-2 under Mr P P Chaudhary is likely to be presented in the Parliament today. It will be taken up for further discussions based on the time allocated.

A tentative copy of the modified bill is available at www.dpa2021.in

Some Comments have already been presented in this website in the last few days. These are available below.

PDPA 2021: The Data Protection Officer is now in an elevated professional status

PDPA 2021: The nature of Data as an Asset and nomination facility

PDPA 2021: Regulating the human perceptions

PDPA 2021: Definition of Harm to include psychological manipulation

PDPA 2021: Should Big Data and Data Analytics industry be worried?

Yet another bill which may be presented in the Parliament today is the Crypto Bill which also is the revised version compared to the 2019 version.

In the event the Crypto Bill is presented, there is an expectation that a large number of people will disinvest their Bitcoin holdings and the money will flow to the Indian Stock Markets which should see a boom. For the last few days some media sources have been building up the hype that the Bill is likely to be postponed and hence the stock market was seeing a flight of capital for investments crypto currencies. This trend could reverse immediately if the Bill is presented.

Let us hope both the bills would be presented today to the Parliament so that they can at least move to the next stage before they are passed.

Naavi

IMF has given a clear warning that if Crypto currencies are recognized as legal tender, there would be a macro economic instability.

Read here

Also here

Some of the comments made by IMF are:

1. 1. Consumer protection risks remain substantial given limited or inadequate disclosure and oversight. For example, more than 16,000 tokens have been listed in various exchanges and around 9,000 exist today, while the rest have disappeared in some form.
   2. Many of them have no volumes or the developers have walked away from the project.
   3.  Some were likely created solely for speculation purposes or even outright fraud.
   4. The (pseudo) anonymity of crypto assets also creates data gaps for regulators and can open unwanted doors for money laundering, as well as terrorist financing.
   5. Although authorities may be able to trace illicit transactions, they may not be able to identify the parties to such transactions
   6. Threats to fiscal policy could also intensify, given the potential for crypto assets to facilitate tax evasion.
   7. A migration of crypto “mining” activity out of China to other emerging market and developing economies can have an important impact on domestic energy use—especially in countries that rely on more C0₂-intensive forms of energy, as well as those that subsidize energy costs—given the large amount of energy needed for mining activities.

It does not require rocket science to understand that if an anonymous form of currency comes into existence in the form of Bitcoin like Cryptos or the Crypto Assets such as Virtual Tokenized assets, the impact on the economy would be devastating and chaotic.

The Cryptos will definitely be attractive for all tax evaders, criminals, terrorists who are all in a majority in the world today. Honest tax payer is in a minority world over. Politicians who make rules are the primary corrupt persons who want continuation of the Digital Black currencies and Bureaucrats want find it comfortable for taking bribes.

In such a scenario, the hesitancy of the Indian Government to take on the banning of private cryptos is understandable though regrettable. What is a tragedy however is that even Mr Narendra Modi is not able to take a decision probably because the majority of people around him are in favour of Cryptos.

The recent hacking of Mr Modi’s twitter account to promote Bitcoins is not surprising since a majority of persons associated with Bitcoins are criminals and expert hackers. They will continue to undertake their Cyber Terror attacks such as these to show off their strengths.

If we are not buckling under the terror attacks in Kashmir, we should not buckle under the Bitcoin sponsored attacks also.

According to today’s press reports, the presentation of the Bill in the Parliament  is likely to be delayed. I hope this is only a wishful thinking of the industry. But we need to keep our fingers crossed and wait to see whether the Government has the courage to take on digital black money or not.

Naavi