Data protection panel against hefty penalties on tech giants

What is the news?

Joint Parliament Committee (JPC) headed by P P Chaudhary has finalized its recommendations on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019.

What are the JPC recommendations regarding technology giants?

The committee is against imposing hefty penalties on global technology giants such as Facebook, Instagram, Google etc. As there is no clear mechanism to quantify the global turnover of companies, especially when the digital data space is changing rapidly. So, the committee suggested enabling the government to quantify the penalties.

JPC also recommended to did away the penalty of Rs 5 crore or 2% of worldwide turnover for violations such as failure to take prompt and appropriate action in response to a data security breach, failure to register with the proposed data protection authority etc.

What will be the impact of JPC recommendations?

Not imposing a hefty penalty will be a big relief to the global giants, especially when many of them are accused for user-info violations, data breaches, unlawful processing, and lax oversight. For e.g. CBI inquiry over the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica episode, which involves the misuse of data.

Source: This post is based on the article “Data protection panel against hefty penalties on tech giants” published in the Times of India on 25th November 2021.