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What has happened?
After the Cambridge Analytica crisis exploded, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad warned Facebook against the misuse of Indians’ data and any attempt to influence the electoral processes of this country.
Dangers abound
Creating Psychological Profiles: Data mined from Indian users of social media may be used for purposes such as targeted cross-platform advertising, but analysed in bulk, such data can provide an intimate psychological profile including ideological preferences that together help campaign managers target communications and forecast voter behavior
Spread of Fake News: Social Media promotes content based on engagement rather than quality thus limiting users’ access to information, which in turn leads to political polarisation and the spread of fake news
No data protection law in India
Only a Whitepaper till now: In 2017 that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology released a White Paper by a committee of experts led by former Supreme Court judge, Justice B.N. Srikrishna, on a data protection framework for India.
Current Information Technology Act, 2000 inadequate: It only identifies six types of “sensitive personal data” and requires entities handling such data to have “reasonable security practices and procedures” in place before collecting the information
