Saving private data!
Piyush Sharma
LInkedin Top Voice 'AI' and 'Leadership Development' | Global CEO | Board-Member | C-Suite Advisor | TEDx Speaker
Data. Basis for research! Input for knowledge! Grounding for understanding! Stable object! Reusable goods! Asset! Tool of power and domination! Subject of legislation and governance!
The once humble data today denotes all of the above and much more. Activated across contexts and aggregated with others, ever-growing in quantity, range and value with implications across the social, economic, political and technological fabric. The complexity with not only humans meeting, working, playing, shopping and interacting online leaving gigabytes of data crumbs but potentially machines in an IoT enabled world.
Data is not a neutral field. Governance is imperative.
My data. Your data. Whose data?
“Data is the pollution problem of the information age, and protecting privacy is the environmental challenge,” says Bruce Schneier - an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist and famous writer.
Nitin Gadkari recently gave an interesting insight in the Lok Sabha session: Govt of India has earned 65 crores by providing access of vehicular database of vehicle registration and drivers’ license to 87 private and 32 government entities.
During a recent hearing on data privacy in supreme court, Justice Deepak Gupta said that he is afraid of using mobiles as he found Google tracks him everywhere. Further, he quoted that he can buy an AK-47 from the internet.
India still does not have any law for protecting personal data.
Back in the day, life was easier when Apple and Blackberry were still fruits. In the 1990s, Google was a simple search engine. Android, Youtube, Google maps and Gmail were yet to be born. Google did have a privacy policy even then – a simple 600 words to detail the process of collection and usage of personal data. More than 20 years later, Google’s privacy policy runs into a sprawling 4000-word treatise to explain the company’s data practices. The metamorphosis across 20 years and 30 versions is pretty much the story of the web’s transmutation into a terribly complex animal. And all the tech players have been smart enough to carve privacy policies to match.
Data Governance: The Big Imperative
Data. Basis for research! Input for knowledge! Grounding for understanding! Stable object! Reusable goods! Asset! Tool of power and domination! Subject of legislation and governance!
The once humble data today denotes all of the above and much more. Activated across contexts and aggregated with others, ever growing in quantity, range and value with implications across social, economic, political and technological fabric. The complexity with not only humans meeting, working, playing, shopping and interacting online leaving gigabytes of data crumbs but potentially machines in an IoT enabled world.
Data is not a neutral field. Governance is imperative.
The digital economy today is thriving as an ocean of myriad technologies with massive data being produced and exchanged on a per-second basis.
Privacy may simply be captured as the right of an individual to be free from uninvited surveillance. Increased surveillance combined with profiling of individuals can lead to an impact on individual independence and therefore tantamounts to breach of privacy.
Unregulated and arbitrary use of personal data raises concerns regarding the privacy and autonomy of an individual. The right to privacy has now been famously recognized in India as a fundamental right protected by the constitution as per a 2017 Supreme Court decision.
In an age of digitisation, data is the most important asset that a company has. Irrespective of the positions on the matter, data is at the heart of lending unprecedented influence to the impulses and behavior patterns of individuals and as a collective.
The world at India’s doors
India is amongst the fastest-growing large economies of the world. The world’s technology majors – from Beijing to Silicon Valley – realise the tremendous opportunities that the seismic shift from the old economy to the digital economy is throwing open in the country.
At 200 billion-dollar size for its digital economy, India is too lucrative to ignore for the world tech giants. The swords are out over the core commodity: data.
India’s digital economy is projected to reach a trillion dollars as per a government-commissioned study and thereby boost the $2.6 trillion total economy to a dream 5 trillion-dollar economy. The prime minister’s Digital India campaign encompasses IT, e-commerce, telecom, digital payments and online government services under its ambit.
Privacy v/s Digitization
India must strike the right balance while formulating the law to leverage a data-driven ecosystem along with all reasonable restrictions.
The proposed privacy law is based on the draft personal data protection bill of 2018. The core idea is to protect the individual interest while allowing the legitimate use of data by the state and private enterprises.
The draft bill has its more than fair share of positives. It has however been criticised for some ambiguity, imposing excessive obligations on data fiduciaries and/or prescribing disproportionate punishments.
One particular controversy has been on the proposed data localization as a mandatory requirement. Arguments range from the associated limitations of such data localisation being against the basic philosophy of the internet to imposing additional operating costs on data fiduciaries to hindering global innovation and progress of India’s digital economy to challenging the principles of free-market economy.
In the wake of India’s data localization provision, Mark Zuckerberg has been vocal in describing it as setting a precedent with more authoritarian countries tightening their restrictions over data. The US government has cited the same as one of its main concerns in its bilateral relationship with India.
In its latest stance, MeitY’s S Gopalakrishnan is ringing a confidence bell in making opposition to its data localization tempered in the wake of an anticipated global framework of taxing big technology as per a recent proposal by OECD.
It is premature to comment as the final law is about to be put before the parliament. It is hoped that a little more balance will help in India’s promotion of Digital India, Make in India and in making ‘doing business in India’ work.
Differing Global Views
Data protection and privacy are resonating across global conversations – Europe’s for non-EU countries, California’s upcoming Consumer Privacy Act, South Korea’s currently being updated Personal Information Protection Act and India’s soon-to-become Personal Data Protection Act are on the watchlist of all observers.
The US data protection model allows the collection of personal information as long as the individual is informed of such collection and use. And is considered the most laissez-faire in its approach.
The Indian government in the meanwhile is taking recourse in asserting sovereignty and leadership with a billion-plus people consumption market as also due to the possible vulnerability of data exploiting or colonizing fears.
Beyond all this is also the opportunity for the Indian government to chart a new course as different from the US data protection model of restraining the state, the European model of privileging the individual and the Chinese model of serving the collective – in the process creating an independent global statesman position for New Delhi.
Something which the new India is proud to assert under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Article as originally published in and reproduced from Fortune India, Nov 2019.
You may also be interested in reading my other articles - links at the absolute bottom of this page.