Kerala bats for right to privacy: 

Kerala bats for right to privacy: 

Context

• Kerala Government had recently stated that technology in future could use the data collected through Aadhaar for surveillance

Right to Privacy absolute?

• The state has further asked to protect the fundamental right and safeguard its citizens from intrusions by the State.
• Kerala has insisted that even though ‘Right to privacy’ is not “absolute”. But it is a fundamental right nevertheless.
• The submission to a nine-judge Constitution Bench, led by Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar, came before the lengthy arguments on the question of whether the right to privacy is a fundamental right

Misuse of Information

• In the constitutional reference before the Bench, the Pinarayi Vijayan government supported the case of petitioners that technology would progress so much that data collected through Aadhaar could be used for surveillance
• This came as a significant intervention as other State governments had mostly intervened to submit that privacy should be recognised as a statutory right and not a fundamental right.
• The government said privacy encompassed the “personal intimacies of the home, family, marriage, motherhood, procreation, child rearing, feelings, love and passion, etc.
• A person’s thought process, fantasies, etc., would also necessarily come under his Right to Privacy”.

Invasion of technology

• Counsel V.P. Surendranath and Nishe Rajan Shonker, representing Kerala further stated that the intimate details of a person’s body, mind, thought process and fantasies must be treated as Right to Privacy — as part of Right to Life and Personal Liberty — under Article 21 of the Constitution