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THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 27 December 2019 (The Data Protection Bill only weakens user rights (The Hindu))

The Data Protection Bill only weakens user rights (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2 : Polity
Prelims level : Data Protection Bill
Mains level : Pros and cons of the Data Protection Bill

Context:

The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha this month, is a revolutionary piece of legislation that promises to return power and control to people in our digital society.
Pending deliberation before a Joint Parliamentary Committee, it is intimately connected to the very same fundamental rights and constitutional principles that are being defended today on the streets and in the fields.
Before focusing on the nuances and finer details which merit deliberation we must take a step back to look at the broader politics of personal data protection.
This would help contextualise the legislative proposal and understand the degree of protection which is limited by overboard exceptions in favour of security and revenue interests.

Securitisation and revenue:

The rise of the national security narrative has not been gone unnoticed by seasoned political observers. What is novel is its intersection with technology.
This is central to several policy and political pronouncements by the present government.
This shrugs off any recognition of its contested legality before the Supreme Court which ruled on the fundamental right to privacy.
Privacy is mentioned just once in this voluminous document 49 mentions of ‘security’ and 56 mentions of ‘technology’.

Principles in conflict:

The scale of data collection is ambitious and broadly contained in the ‘Digital India’ programme; on its website it says: “to transform the entire ecosystem of public services through the use of information technology…”.
Here, all elements of a citizen-state interaction are being data-fied.
In the view of some technologists, this also fulfils geostrategic goals when personal data is viewed as strategic state resource.
However, this poses grave risks to the right to privacy. These become evident from a casual reading of the national Economic Survey of 2019, which in Chapter 4 devotes an entire chapter on the fiscal approach towards personal data.
In a “Chapter at a glance” it says: “In thinking about data as a public good, care must also be taken to not impose the elite’s preference of privacy on the poor, who care for a better quality of living the most.”

Operation of this policy framework:

The first is with respect to the recent sale of vehicular registration data and driving licences by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.
It’s quite often, the principles of a data protection law would conflict with these uses as it would break the fundamental premise of purpose limitation.
This principle broadly holds that personal data which is gathered for a specific purpose cannot be put to any other distinct use without consent of the person from whom it was acquired.
The second is an expert committee (headed by Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairperson, Infosys) on what is termed “community data”.
While the definition of such, “community data” is contested, as per the note it is plainly obvious this is again to serve fiscal interests of the state and technology businesses when it states that such data “is critical for economic advantage”.

Muddled formulation:

The existing draft of the Data Protection Bill is reflective of a political economy that is motivated towards ensuring minimal levels of protection for personal data.
It has a muddled formulation in terms of its aims and objectives, contains broad exemptions in favour of security and fiscal interests, including elements of data nationalism by requiring the compulsory storage of personal data on servers located within India.
From its very preamble it seeks to place the privacy interests of individuals on the same footing as those of businesses and the state.
Here, by placing competing interests on the same plane, two natural consequences visit the drafting choices within it.
The principle of data protection to actualise the fundamental right to privacy is not fulfilled as a primary goal but is conditioned from the very outset.
By placing competing goals — which contradict each other — any balancing is clumsy, since no primary objectives are set.
This results in a muddy articulation that would ultimately ensure a weak data protection law.

Way forward:

The Data Protection Bill is not a leaky oil barrel with large exceptions, but it is a perfect one.
It will refine, store and then trade the personal information of Indians without their control; open for sale or open for appropriation to the interests of securitisation or revenue maximisation, with minimal levels of protection.
For this to change, we have to not only focus on red-lining the finer text of this draft but also reframing large parts of its intents and objectives.
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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With reference to the 2019 Pollution and Health Metrics: Global, Regional and Country Analysis report released by Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP), consider the following statements:
1. In 2017, pollution was responsible for 15% of all deaths globally, and 275 million Disability-Adjusted Life Years.
2. India tops the list of countries with the most pollution-related deaths in proportion to their population.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) None of the above