Friday, October 7, 2011

Privacy Rights And Laws In India

Privacy laws in India are virtually missing and Indian government seems to be in no rush to have suitable privacy and data protection laws in India. Even the national privacy policy of India is missing. However, recent developments pertaining to cyberspace and ICT, has forced Indian government to think about privacy issues in India.

Indian government has been launching projects without proper procedural safeguards and parliamentary scrutiny. These projects and authorities are openly violating the human rights in cyberspace but Indian government is not deterred by this issues.

It is only after the United Nations has declared that access to Internet is a human right that Indian government is thinking about civil liberty issues in cyberspace. In order to confer legitimacy to projects like Aadhar, National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), Central Monitoring System (CMS), Centre for Communication Security Research and Monitoring (CCSRM), etc, they must be supported by a techno legal framework. Presently, none of them are governed by any Legal Framework and none of them are under Parliamentary Scrutiny.

While lack of privacy law has already stalled Natgrid yet other projects like unique identification project of India or Aadhar project of India are simply unconstitutional by their very existence and being violative of privacy rights as conferred under Indian constitution.

For some strange reasons, Indian government has been ignoring enactment of good techno legal privacy laws in India. Various governmental ministries have started the exercise of enacting the privacy law for India time to time but ultimately none of them materialised. These exercises proved to be futile and till now we are still waiting for the enactment of sufficient and strong privacy laws in India.

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