GS paper 2
Syllabus: Parliament-structure, functioning, the conduct of business, power and privileges and issues arising out of these, Data protection bill
Directions: UPSC may ask about Data protection bill and provisions of IT Act 2000 etc
Source: The Hindu, Indian Express
Context:
- The Union Information Technology Minister announced the withdrawal of The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 in the Lok Sabha.
- He stated that the government has decided to come up with a fresh bill that fits into the comprehensive legal framework with reference to the suggestions made by the Joint Committee of Parliament (JCP) on the Bill.
- The Joint Committee of Parliament on the Personal Data Protection Bill had submitted a 542-page report with overall 93 recommendations and 81 amendments to the Bill in December 2021.
- Apart from that, the panel, headed by former Union Minister, had recommended about 97 corrections and improvements to the Bill.
- The data protection Bill has been in the works since 2018 when a panel, led by retired Supreme Court judge Justice B N Srikrishna.
Recommendations by Joint Parliamentary Committee(JCP):
The JCP proposed 81 amendments to the Bill finalized by the Srikrishna panel and 12 recommendations including:
- Broader data protection: Expanding its mandate to include discussions on non-personal data, thereby changing the mandate of the Bill from personal data protection to broader data protection
- Regulation of social media: Changes on issues such as the regulation of social media companies.
- Trusted hardware: Using only “trusted hardware” in smartphones, among other things.
- Data protection in line with SC judgment: The new Bill will incorporate the broader ideas of data protection as recommended by the JCP and will be in line with the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment of 2017 in which it held privacy as a fundamental right.
- Social media as content publishers: The JCP’s report also proposed that social media companies that do not act as intermediaries are to be treated as content publishers, they become liable for the content they host.
- Non-personal data: The JCP had also recommended including non-personal data in the Bill. In its most basic form, non-personal data is any set of data which does not contain personally identifiable information.
The Data Protection Bill will do away with some recommendations by the JCP such as:
- Including “trusted hardware” and local storage of some kinds of personal data within the boundaries of India: Instead, it will add these ideas in the larger framework for the internet ecosystem which will replace the Information Technology Act, 2000.
- Do away with classification of personal data from the perspective of data localisation: The new Bill could also do away with classification of personal data from the perspective of data localisation and only use classification for awarding damages to people whose personal data may have been compromised by an entity.
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Practice Questions:
Q. Critically analyze the provisions of the Data protection bill. Mention the changes suggested by Justice B N Srikrishna committee on data protection bill.
