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Data Privacy Law’s Impact on Indian Election System

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What will be the impact of Data Privacy Law on our Existing election system?

The Draft Data Privacy Law suggested by Justice Srikrishna committee says processing sensitive personal data by the State without the consent of the individual can be done for the functioning of the Parliament or a state Legislature and for providing state benefits to individuals.

But as per my view publishing personal data online (on EC Website) without any checks throws the data sets open for third parties and could be used for harmful ends. One of the primary sources of data for political data analytics is the electoral roll that can be downloaded from the Election Commission website. e.g., the names of people in the voter list coupled with their gender, and house number could be used by the third person to find out where their target lives and possibly breach the privacy of any individual.

Protecting personal data and restoring control over its ownership and flow has also become imperative ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Demographic data of the constituencies can be extracted from the electoral roll and used for targeted campaigns in elections via social media.

A study by the University of Oxford researchers on ‘Online Social Media Manipulation’ has found evidence of such campaigns in 48 countries, including in India. The study found that political parties and governments have spent more than half a billion dollars on the implementation of psychological operations and public opinion manipulation over social media.

Facebook, for example, has faced flak for its opaque data sharing practice, after personal data on the platform was used to obtain information on hundreds of thousands of voters globally, including 500,000 people in India.

The Srikrishna Committee’s report on data privacy and protection have not factored in the need to educate officials and create institutional capacity in complying with privacy norms.

We are also seeing the ambiguity to other public databases easily available such as the list of MGNREGA beneficiaries, land records, First Information Reports, and court records, which are currently not in conformance with the draft privacy bill.

#DataPrivacyLaw #Indianelectionsystem #election2019, #GDPR



Data Privacy Law GDPR Coming to India

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Data Privacy Law or General Data Protection Regulations is the new Privacy Protection Regulation law which is going to be adopted soon by Organizations in India as the main purpose of the GDPR is to ensure that the privacy and personal data of every individual are steadfastly protected. It seeks to regulate the purpose for and the manner in which several entities, including governments, collect and process data about individuals using automated means data controllers.
India is behind in schedule to compared the advancements several western nations have made in privacy and data protection. This becomes a cause for concern when a regulation (such as the GDPR) sets the global standards for data protection. A situation where Indian companies are arm-twisted into accepting EU standards of data protection is undesirable but wholly possible given the flurry of activity following the GDPR. The data protection laws in India are poorly drafted and application of the same can raise serious questions taking into consideration.

India should take this chance to objectively examine how the GDPR is rolled out and the way it fares. So as to make sure that it creates a legislation that lives on, it should determine the core principles on that an information protection law are going to be found. With the divide between technology and therefore the law gaping wider with every passing day, India’s information protection law should aim to bridge any data gap between information users and data controllers. It should build in review mechanisms to make sure that controllers are command accountable, whereas at a similar time encouraging them to innovate voluntary best practices for privacy. They ought to learn from the GDPR and flesh out the rights for each individual has over her information as observed from the GDPR, India should not over-regulate, as this can be one of the surest ways that of creating a chilling effect on each technology as well as privacy.

It is vital to accept GDPR to the fullest, as GDPR lays heavy monetary penalties on non-compliant organizations. Accepting a privacy designed move can increase the organization’s awareness of privacy and information protection problems, and address vulnerabilities promptly.

Areas which require focus under the GDPR are:

1 Training and Awareness
2 Data process & Accountability
3 Notice and Consent
4 Cross-border information transfer
5 Third-party and seller management
6 Transparency of data and communication
7 Data security, storage, breach notification

Privacy and protection of an individual’s information is and will be the highest priority of the governing bodies and it’s time that we tend to devised regulative rules for an equivalent. That being aforesaid, it’s very imperative to revise the current state of information protection and privacy laws in India to safeguard personal information and data in a very rightful manner. Stronger information protection and governance laws are the necessity of the hour.

As concluded, GDPR will enhance the correct result by word and spirit, if the protection of information which measures by enterprises and empowers their customers, as well as businesses operative of different location, can also take over the GDPR standards as for data protection and privacy progressively becomes a worry.

#GDPR #DataPrivacy #GDPRIndia #BS10012 #PIMS #AAdhar #AAdharIndia #GDPRAAdhar