‘Informed choice’ unclear in Data Protection Bill?

BENGALURU: The draft of the Personal Data Protection Bill 2018 is presently out for the public to study and recommend suggestions to. One of the foremost law education institution in the city, National Law School of India University (NLSIU) with the help of city police officials, experts from academia and the corporate sector, had sent its suggestions when the white paper on the data protection framework had been invited a while back.

The government had constituted a committee under former Supreme Court Justice, B N Srikrishna for the purpose. The Advanced Center on Research, Development and Training in Cyber Law and Forensics at (NLSIU) conducted two rounds of consultation on the matter. Sanjay Sahay, ADGP, Karnataka Lokayukta, Bhushah D Borase, DGP (Admin), Bengaluru Police were some officials who took part in the consultation. Also representatives of companies such as Infosys, Microsoft, TCS were also consulted.

The report highlights a number of issues ranging from informed choice for a person to share his or her data, to proper guidelines to store and get rid of data. On data as a concept for example, the report highlights that the existing law does not specify or distinguish between personal data and company’s data.
It is essential to distinguish between data protection and information protection in the upcoming law.

The report also highlights the importance of bringing in the condition of ‘informed consent’ while sharing one’ personal data. However most times people are not aware of the clauses and nitty gritties of such contracts. It bats for transparency and informed choice in the new proposed law.

Dr Nagarathna A, from the Center at NLSIU, who took a lead in the making of the report says, “We framed a report then and sent it to the B N Srikrishna committee when the white paper consultation on the matter was going on. Now that the draft bill is out, we are planning to conduct another round of consultation to air our views on the new draft bill.”