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Indian government withdraws Personal Data Protection Bill
- marioexpert 4y ago
- the_common_man 4y agoCan you elaborate more? Why is he dangerous to humanity?
- sofixa 4y ago
- 1sembiyan 4y agoNot more dangerous to fellow humans than other kinds of world leaders, surely? America, without nationalist populists at the helm these past two decades, was clearly dangerous to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq (unless they are not part of humanity). Self-serving politicians are the rule across the world, not exceptions. The best we can hope for is one person is not in power for too long.
- cdot2 4y agoI'm not all that worried about the safety of the Taliban or ISIS
- ethbr0 4y agoIsolationist world leaders have historically been dangerous for humanity! /s
- sofixa 4y ago[flagged]
- InCityDreams 4y agoI wholeheartedly agree, except >There's nothing wrong in being proud with your country, Carlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOmQP9guIl0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOmQP9guIl0
- guesswho_ 4y ago[flagged]
- sofixa 4y agoI like how I basically trashed all US politicians and policies, their whole way of political life and you assumed I'm American. I'm not. And for the record, the US isn't bombing Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are, with US, British, French and other weapons. Get your war crimes right. Complicity by selling weapons for war crimes, and actually committing war crimes, are not the same thing.
- yiamvino 4y ago
- ksquarekumar 4y ago
- nindalf 4y agoI'm always on board for criticism of any ruling government, Modi included. But in this case, it seems like OP is wrong. They're coming up with a replacement bill. It won't be GDPR, but it'll be something.
- pmg1991 4y agoWow user of this comment is just 3 minutes older than the comment,
- dev080913 4y ago
- anshumankmr 4y ago>New Delhi [India], August 4 (ANI): Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday explained the reason behind withdrawing the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, asserting that the aim is to bring new compressive legislation at par with technology landscape which is changing rapidly. He further said that the Joint Committee of Parliament recommended 81 amendments in a Bill that was of 99 sections which practically, suggested for overhauling the Bill. The government on Wednesday withdrew the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 and has decided to come up with new legislation in view of a large number of amendments suggested by the Joint Committee of Parliament towards a comprehensive legal framework on the digital ecosystem. Speaking to ANI, the Union Minister said, the Joint Parliamentary Committee recommended major changes in the Bill, which was like rewriting the entire Bill. “The Joint Parliamentary Committee did very extensive work. They consulted a very large number of stakeholders. After it, the Joint Committee of Parliament gave a very comprehensive report which recommended 81 amendments in a Bill that was of 99 sections, it was practically rewriting the entire bill. Apart from the amendments, they were some 12 major suggestions were there from the committee,” said Vaishnaw. He said that it was important to withdraw the old Bill to come up with a contemporary and modern legal framework to tackle the challenges of coping with the rapidly changing technology. https://theprint.in/india/personal-data-protection-bill-withdrawn-to-bring-contemporary-modern-legal-framework-ashwini-vaishnaw/1069014/ https://theprint.in/india/personal-data-protection-bill-with... Let's see what happens. Personally, most people really don't cares about their data privacy, it only really became a talking point when TikTok started gaining dominance in India cause China is a geopolitical and millitary threat. I don't have any real hopes of them enacting something close to the GDPR ever.
- 1sembiyan 4y agoDid the 2019 bill have any impact on the extant data collection practices?
- HelloNurse 4y agoThe article seems to suggest a relatively good bill shot down by a weak or corrupt government that serves the interests of big companies with bad practices who don't want to be sued, actual data predators, etc. But without details, "Personal Data Protection" can be newspeak for government-sanctioned abuse, like laws against "Child Pornography" that are actually intended to establish interception platforms. Are there good summaries of these Indian laws?
- portpecos 4y agoI question your claim of a weak or corrupt government based on the article below. It sounds like there was pushback from Startups who complained about compliance intensity, concerns about definitions of data storage when it came to adversarial countries, and a host of other concerns: History: In 2017, the Indian Supreme Court recognised the right to privacy as a fundamental right within the ambit of the Constitution. The top court had directed the Centre to come up with a data protection framework for the country. The data protection law for India has been in the works since 2018, when a panel led by Justice Srikrishna, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, drew up a draft version of a Bill. The draft was reviewed by the JCP, which submitted its recommendations along with a draft Bill in November 2021. Why has the Bill been withdrawn? In a note circulated to Members of Parliament, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw explained the reason behind the withdrawal of the Bill: “The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 was deliberated in great detail by the Joint Committee of Parliament. 81 amendments were proposed and 12 recommendations were made towards a comprehensive legal framework on the digital ecosystem. Considering the report of the JCP, a comprehensive legal framework is being worked upon. Hence, in the circumstances, it is proposed to withdraw ‘The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019’ and present a new Bill that fits into the comprehensive legal framework. The Bill was also seen as being too “compliance intensive” by startups of the country, The Indian Express had reported earlier. According to government sources, the revamped Bill will be much easier to comply with, especially for startups. So what could the revamped Bill look like? Specific provisions or contours of the upcoming new Bill are not known. But a senior official said that on the question of data localisation, the government is considering whether to add it to the planned new version of the Information Technology Act, and whether to allow cross-border data flows only to “trusted geographies” When is the revamped Bill expected to be ready? Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the government will table the new legislation in Parliament “very quickly”. “The government has today withdrawn the Personal Data Protection Bill that was formulated in 2018 and re-written by the JCP in 2021,” Chandrasekhar said on Wednesday (August 3). “After considerable deliberation and examination of the JCP’s report, it was found that there is a need for a comprehensive redrawing of laws and rules taking into account some of the JCP’s comments and the emerging challenges and opportunities that arise from there. A comprehensive approach to the laws will be undertaken by the government and we will come back to Parliament very quickly after following the process of consultation,” he said. According to sources in the IT Ministry, the government is aiming to bring the legislation in Parliament’s Winter Session. A senior official said that the new Bill would incorporate the broader ideas of data protection as recommended by the JCP, and would be in line with the Supreme Court’s landmark privacy judgment of 2017. Given the significant number of amendments suggested by the JCP, it was necessary to comprehensively redraw the contours of the proposed law, the official said. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-sci-tech/personal-data-protection-bill-withdrawal-reason-impact-explained-8070495/ https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-sci-te... As a side note: I don't know why AccessNow.org's blog post was upvoted. It's extremely light on details.
- kobiguru 4y agoIn case you are serious about understanding why it was pulled out and really care about the details for such an action, I highly recommend you check the Joint Committee on the Personal Data Protection report [1] the Press Release section where they released the 534 pages report on it. Gist of it is - the committee recommended major changes across the board in all sections of the act so the IT Ministry would rework the bill and present it for discussion again in the parliament. I know India looks like a lawless place because of the chaotic news coverage in the NYtimes but it is a democracy and most if not all government action have rational policy choices that presented in the Indian parliament. The loksabha proceedings (especially the question hour) is the best way to understand what goes on in India. Edit: For those without a lot of time should check the point by point explanation and rebuttal for the recommendations here [2] 1. http://loksabhaph.nic.in/Committee/CommitteeInformation.aspx?comm_code=73&tab=5 http://loksabhaph.nic.in/Committee/CommitteeInformation.aspx... 2. https://vidhilegalpolicy.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/JPC-PDP-Referencer.pdf https://vidhilegalpolicy.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/JPC-P...
- donedealomg 4y ago
- eatonphil 4y agoAre there any reputable Indian law/policy news sites or individuals who you (or anyone) might recommend following? To be fair I can't think of any specific sites like that I follow for US law/policy news, just a variety of people on Twitter.
- Kukumber 4y agoYou can guess how sovereign a country is by how they protect their own people, and how much effort they put into it (or rather their lack of motivation) To me this looks like their government have different interests to protect, than protecting their own people Not a great outlook for the future of India, in a world where tech will be even more predominant and cyberwarfare will pose serious threat to democracy They are at the mercy of the american tech giants, maybe they lobby over there? I wouldn't be surprised since both Google and Microsoft are present over there
- mynameismon 4y ago> To me this looks like their government have different interests to protect, than protecting their own people Where did you derive this from? They are not scrapping the bill in its entirety, rather, they are bringing out a replacement bill.
- oaiey 4y agoI do not understand why legislator of a non-US country is not instantly copying GDPR. It has solid spread already and the rules are adequately balancing customers, law and company interests (yes, that does not look like but hey, advertisement is still possible). International collaboration is much easier like that. GDPR has this very fancy article saying: This all applies, except a law says otherwise. As a government, this is then up to you how many laws you create for your own surveillance and other state apparatus. Citizens get a nice benefit. Big companies anyway need to adhere to GDPR one way or the other due to the international market. Local companies which want to collect citizens data should get their users consent. That is not so hard. Even data privacy paranoid Germany has a private credit rating system which works for 50+ years. There is no other reason except corruption/lobbyism which would require a legislator to vote against a GDPR like approach. There is no risk to your economy by introducing good data privacy. Just a rant. India might have its reasons.
- lbriner 4y agoBecause there will be people for whom any changes would massively affect their ability to do their work/business who would not simply accept something as comprehensive as GDPR. As the OP article says, even if not perfect, why not start here and make amendments later to tighten things up i.e. something is better than nothing. The real problem is that legislation is glacially slow and expensive to put into law which is good (to stop kneejerk laws) but also bad since it doesn't allow you to pass the 90% that is probably agreed and worry about the sticky bits later.
- randomperson_24 4y agoIndia doesn't have enough purchasing power to convince big tech companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) to store the data of Indian residents in India. Also, there are not many local tech monoliths with consumer apps to fall back on (like China had). Since India depends heavily on apps & services by big tech, I doubt such requirements like GDPR has would be enforced. Although the right to ask a website to delete all information about one and so on are quite good and could work.
- deleted 4y ago
- klors 4y agoBRICS countries are going to continue the social credit/aadhar route and the West will watch jealously. This is nothing against China/India etc., I'm sure their populations do not like the direction either.
- eklavya 4y agoHow is social credit in PRC in any shape of form comparable to AADHAR (SSN in US)?
- dane-pgp 4y ago"India's dodgy mass surveillance project should concern us all" "Biometric ID card project Aadhaar links almost every part of a citizen's personal life to a state database" https://www.wired.co.uk/article/india-aadhaar-biometrics-privacy https://www.wired.co.uk/article/india-aadhaar-biometrics-pri...
- cuteboy19 4y agoIt's just a biometric Id system. Europe has one too, its actually very similar to aadhar in scope and usage. In fact the stated reasoning is identical to that of aadhar. https://blog.hidglobal.com/2021/09/european-union-already-rolling-out-biometric-national-id-cards-travel-and-more https://blog.hidglobal.com/2021/09/european-union-already-ro... Though I doubt wired.com would do an article about the draconian European "mass surveillance database".
- ksquarekumar 4y ago
- girishso 4y agoGovernment withdrew the bill only to bring it back in a new form, since the original bill had something like 80 amendments.
- pvsukale3 4y agoRelated: If you want to read policy research on Indian goverment PRS research is a good resource. They usually analyse new bills and amendments in Indian parliament. https://prsindia.org/ https://prsindia.org/
- alephnerd 4y ago+1 on this. I'm surprised I've never come across this before. Their annual reviews are on point.
- yalogin 4y agoOn the spectrum of privacy india is on the furthest end of it. No one cares about privacy and actively give their data over to everyone. For example every vendor asks for your phone number and people don’t question it at all. As great as the privacy law sounds I have a suspicion that it will just be used by police and the government to abuse authority and silence critics like they do with people tweeting anything the government doesn’t like. Hope I am wrong
- stereoradonc 4y agoMajority of the arguments posted here are only for "Modi-ashing"; I'd be tempted to assume they have no idea about the inner workings of the parliamentary processes or how laws are made or governed. The "discussion" has veered off from the initial Joint Parliamentary Committe reports on the incompatibility of the far reaching law on personal data protection. The bill is just withdrawn to be replaced by a different one. There's nothing special there. That's the purpose of the JPC, and I am glad the Government avoided the adversarial clash with the JPC to account for the suggestions therein.
- shreyshnaccount 4y agoFYI, they withdrew it because of major issues that need to be rectified. it will be reintroduced later after the changes have been made. this is how a parliamentary democracy works, how much ever the american media tries to present India as a lawless mess. sure there's things to improve, but name one democracy where there isn't.
- known 4y ago