International Law

Saving Private Indians

By admin

The latest buzz on the web is a statement by a senior EU official to the effect that IP addresses constitute private data and should therefore be subject to applicable EU directives on data protection.

What surprises me is the way issues grab media attention much after the raw material becomes publicly available. The official was merely restating the position of the European Advisory Body on data protection and privacy that he heads - titled the “Article 29 Working Party” (um…as in “don’t you remember that section 48 working party we had when Rahul got totally smashed and puked all over the place?”;)). This body released a paper way back in June last year setting out its position on the definition of “personal data”. Example 15 on page 16 of the paper explains why IP addresses should be considered personal data. One possible explanation for the late buzz (no pun intended) is that this statement was made in the context of Google’s acquisition of Doubleclick and drew a strong and public response from Google.

Google statements always get some attention! Interestingly, when the India Parliamentary Committee on IT released its report on proposed amendments to the Information Technology Act, it was Google’s Rishi Jaitly who blogged against the MPs’ recommendations on not protecting intermediaries such as google from liability. And this was then picked up by some technologically challenged journalist from the Times of India and published with embellishments under the title “Recipe for killing Internet in India“….

…sigh.

But is this relevant to India? While Indian outsourcing firms are increasingly sensitive to western laws and standards of privacy and India is under the spotlight for its lack of data privacy legislation, the average Indian wonders what the fuss is all about. There is a bill on data protection gathering dust, wiretap laws and supreme court guidelines are routinely flouted, every festival has a neighborhood jukebox blaring a heady mix of devotional and film music into your home and the proliferation of camera phones and other devices has enabled widespread invasion of privacy.

But then there are incidents such as the Lakshmana Kailash case (the kind that makes my blood boil) which really bring home the need to have minimum safeguards against the abuse of personal information. Stuff that really makes India an IT superpower. What say?

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Full post as published by Technology Law India on January 25, 2008 (boomark / email).