Privacy in the digital age: 

Privacy in the digital age: 

Context:

• The current focus on the right to privacy is based on some new realities of the digital age.

Explanation:

•         The digital network enters the most proximate spaces and challenges the normally accepted notions of the private.
• It brings into focus new means of exercising social, economic, and political power, and reducing of autonomies.
• It seems that for many, the right is basically against the state, and not so much the digital corporations.
• But a right is a substantive right only if it works in all situations, and for everyone. For example;
• A right to free expression for an individual about her exploitation is meaningless without actual availability of security that guarantees that private force cannot be used to thwart this right.
• The role of the state therefore is not just to abstain from preventing rightful free expression but also to actively ensure that private parties are not able to block it.

Suggestions:

• Like in the physical space, the private and the public must be separated in the digital realm as well.
• We need a constitutional definition and guarantee of the right to individuality, personal autonomy and privacy in the digital age.
• While establishing a right to privacy, the Supreme Court must also direct the state to develop appropriate institutions for shaping the state’s role in a digital society/economy.
• This may require, at some stage, an independent branch of the state exclusively dealing with data issues and management.
• Framing of a right to privacy must not curtail the state’s due role in our collective digital futures.
• This will only ensure that global digital corporations become all-powerful economic, social and political actors.
• They already provide most of the digital services that appear to be of a public good nature, and in turn control and shape entire sectors.
• A citizen must have options to undertake basic digital functions like emailing, information search, social networking, etc. without sacrificing her privacy rights.