India wants to protect your data. Should you worry? – By Megha Bahree (Al Jazeera) / December 27, 2021
India has expanded the bill to include non-personal data, exempt gov’t agencies and potentially curb free speech.
After it introduced a Personal Data Protection Bill in December 2019 to protect people’s personal data, India said it would set up a data protection authority to do the job.
At the time, some of the initial concerns around it – including an increase in the cost of doing business as well as pushback on a clause that empowered the government to ask a company to hand over its data, anonymised, for policy-planning purposes – were well publicised.
Soon after, the bill was referred to a joint parliamentary committee, with members from across the political spectrum, to analyse it and suggest modifications based on concerns raised by different stakeholders, including government agencies, businesses, activists and data security experts.
The committee, after many delays, tabled a report in Parliament in mid-December with suggestions on how to tweak the bill. And the battle lines have already been drawn.
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