Drafting a data protection Bill

Drafting a data protection Bill

News:

1. The draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018, recognises privacy as a fundamental right.
2. Key features of the Bill are given below

• It has provisions to protect personal data as an essential facet of information privacy.
• The objective of the bill is to balance the growth of the digital economy and use of data as a means of communication.
• The Bill applies to the processing of personal data.
• It includes the processing of personal data by the state, any Indian company, any Indian citizen, or any person or body of persons incorporated or created under Indian law.
• The Bill also brings within its ambit the processing of personal data by data fiduciaries or data processors located abroad in connection with business.
• The proposed law defines personal data as information relating to a natural person.
• The Srikrishna Committee has complied with the Supreme Court‘s suggestion that collection, processing and storage of personal data should be limited to the stated purpose.
• The Bill also mandates that data fiduciaries should retain personal data “only as long as may be reasonably necessary to satisfy the purpose for which it is processed”.
• There should be a periodic review done to check if continued storage of data is necessary.
• The Bill includes the ‘right to be forgotten’, which is the right of a data principal to restrict or prevent continuing disclosure of personal data by a data fiduciary.