The panel will likely play an important role as the Personal Data Protection Bill gets tabled in Parliament.
A new law that defines how companies should process users' data came into force with the President giving assent to the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act passed by Parliament in the just-concluded monsoon session. The law arms individuals with greater control over their data while allowing companies to transfer users' data abroad for processing, except to nations and territories restricted by the Centre through notification. It also gives the government power to seek information from firms and issue directions to block content.
It is sad that the legislative pre-consultation on such an important bill is being done in a very biased manner, notes Shailesh Gandhi, former Central Information Commissioner, recounting his experience with Minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar.
After the draft data protection bill, the government is now all set to bring another key legislation -- Digital India Bill -- that will be made available for public consultation by the month-end, Minister of State for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Thursday. The Digital India Bill, which will replace the 22-year old Information Technology (IT) Act, will be contemporary and a modern piece of legislation, the Minister promised. The proposed bill, alongside the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill whose draft was released recently, will contribute to the evolving framework which is light on regulation, safeguards consumer rights and catalyses innovation, the minister said while speaking at CII Global Economic Policy Summit 2022.
Both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha did not see a debate on the Manipur violence, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah spoke on it during their addresses on the no-confidence motion.
'...helping the government, citizens, and companies get the balance right.' 'As great as technology is, these are societal questions, not just technical ones.'
MeitY had stated there was a need to set up GACs as grievance officers hired by the platforms often did not address issues satisfactorily.
One fallout of Rahul Gandhi's disqualification will be reflected in the Opposition's role in Parliament and related institutions.
The Delhi high court dismissed the appeals of WhatsApp and Facebook on Thursday against an order rejecting their challenge to a probe ordered by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) into the instant messaging platform's updated privacy policy of 2021.
The Centre's claim has been made in an additional affidavit filed in response to several pleas challenging the new privacy policy of WhatsApp.
If the Personal Data Protection Bill gets passed in its present form, a new class of companies and entities could emerge. The sole job of these new entities would be to manage the consent for data usage of a user.Banks, healthcare firms and fintech companies, among others, fear that sharing non-personal data with the government may hurt business interests. Banks also fear the threat of data misuse.
Google's chief privacy officer, Keith Enright, has warned policymakers that frequent and large-scale sharing of citizen data, even if anonymized, can damage users' privacy. Pointing to research that shows data sets lose their anonymity if shared consistently over time, he said: "I would encourage policymakers and companies to be extremely circumspect while proceeding in that direction." Anonymization is a technique that removes or modifies personally identifiable information, resulting in data that cannot be associated with any one individual.
E-commerce giant Amazon has refused to appear before the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Data Protection Bill on October 28 and this amounts to breach of privilege, panel chairperson and BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi said on Friday.
Women are a minuscule minority of those arrested under the IT Act.
Tharoor argued that the proposed bill represents a "grave chapter in the history of the Indian republic, seeking to ratify an ordinance that in many ways is an assault on our democratic heritage and the spirit of federalism."
The 54-year-old Lekhi, who took oath as a Union Minister of State on Wednesday on her second term as the MP from the prestigious New Delhi constituency, has been at the forefront of struggles on a host of issues ranging from those pertaining to women and environment to law and development.
Meanwhile, Kamra has refused to retract his controversial tweets against the Supreme Court or apologise for them, saying he believes they "speak for themselves".
The action was taken under Section 69A of the Act that empowers the government to block any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence.
'If Indians are to be truly protected, Parliament must review and address these dangerous provisions before they become law.'
Representatives of Facebook India have been asked to appear on Friday before the Joint Committee on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, chaired by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Meenakshi Lekhi, while Twitter officials are required to appear before the panel on October 28, as per the notice issued by the Lok Sabha Secretariat.
Ashok Kumar Gupta, chairman of the Competition Commission of India (CCI), has never minced words while talking about the giant technology companies, referring to them on multiple occasions as "centres for entrenched and unchecked dominance". The anti-trust regulator has, in fact, been cracking down on big technology companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and others, after they were hauled up by regulators and lawmakers in Europe and Australia. However, in several instances, existing regulations have prevented the CCI from going all out against these companies for anti-competitive activities.
The opposition will seek to target the government on the issue of farmers' plight as well as their demand for a legal backing for minimum support price.
In the worst-case scenario, it will be next to impossible for tech companies like Amazon and Google to run any service that requires user biometrics.
The final report was to be submitted in March but it got an extension till the second week of the monsoon session that began September 14.
Led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the Opposition members in the Lok Sabha demanded sacking of Union minister Ajay Mishra from the government in connection with the Lakhimpur Kheri violence.
The affidavit further said that the IT Rules impose a host of obligations on a company in relation to the security of the data collected by it in the course of its business.
Domino's India data that included sensitive customer information such as their names, phone numbers, and credit card details has allegedly been breached and put on sale on the dark web. According to tweets by Israel-based Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, Alon Gal, the data is worth 13 terabytes (TB). He tweeted on Sunday that the data includes as many as 180 million order details, including 1 million credit card details. The data, said Gal, was up for sale on the dark web. The threat actor, he said, was asking for $550,000 for the data.
The proposal -- aimed at tackling issues related to anonymity of users in the fast-growing social media space -- has been mooted for the first time as part of the amendments likely to be made to the existing IT intermediary rules, the source said. Social media companies with more than 50 lakh users in India will be categorised as significant social media intermediaries. These companies will also have to comply with stricter obligations, including traceability of users, under the revised rules, the source said.
Since the deadline for Justice B N Srikrishna Committee's feedback is December 31, the government is unlikely to table a data protection Bill in the winter session of Parliament.
'It's looking odds-on there won't be a data protection law before this edition of the Lok Sabha is dissolved.' 'This limbo has enabled all sorts of businesses that would be illegal in countries that do have data protection laws,' notes Devangshu Datta.
The government said that the unilateral changes are not fair and acceptable.
The government, however, dismissed allegations of any kind of surveillance on its part on specific people, saying it 'has no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever'.
The panel said data protection law is designed to limit the processing of personal data to legitimate reasons and adds there is a conflict between transparency and privacy.
"They have apologised for hurting Indian sentiments and have sworn to correct the error by November 30, 2020," she added.
Nadella's visit comes at a time when the Indian government is taking a strong position on issues like data localisation and tightening the rules for e-commerce companies as well as social media platforms.
Microblogging site Twitter's explanations to a parliamentary panel on showing Ladakh as part of China are inadequate and the act amounts to criminal offence attracting imprisonment of seven years, committee chairman Meenakshi Lekhi said on Wednesday.
The reshuffle had politics at its heart, so the biggest complement of new ministers, both Cabinet rank and below, came from UP, which will see assembly elections in a few months.
The proposed amendments to the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, that are envisioned to protect consumer interests, may further compound the impact of multiplicity of regulations on the e-commerce sector, the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) had told the ministry of consumer affairs. IACC, the apex bilateral chamber for Indo-US business, had told the government that the proposed amendments would increase compliance liabilities that risk severely impairing the growth of the sector.
However, the countries did not take up the issue of proposed withdrawal of export incentives by the US to Indian exporters under Generalized System of Preference.
'WhatsApp is storing our data on servers which are physically located in another country.' 'We might be having good relations with a particular country at this very moment, where WhatsApp's data servers are located, and in which our data is stored, but tomorrow we might be having bad relations with them, then what is going to happen to that data.'
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