Data protection not for national security issues

The proposed data protection law will have certain exemptions where data needs to be accessed for the purposes of national security, legal proceedings and police.

Though the draft data protection law prepared by a panel headed by Justice B N Srikrishna emphasised on robust law to protect individual right over personal data, the committee also said that, “there are situations where rights and obligations of data principals and data fiduciaries may not apply in totality”.

Even consent of a person is not required for using personal data for the purposes of serving larger public interest such as national security, prevention and investigation of crime, allocation of resources for human development and protection of the revenue, said the draft Personal Data Protection Bill 2018 said.

The discloser of personal data necessary for enforcing a legal right or claim for seeking any relief, defending any charge would be exempt from the application of the data protection law,the draft law said.

“The data protection law should provide an exemption for prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of contraventions of law (including protection of revenue). In order to invoke the exemption, the law enforcement agencies must be authorised by law,” the bill states.

What ever the exemptions, personal data must always be handled in a fair and reasonable manner that respects the privacy of the data principle, said the draft, which was submitted to the government.

Even for research activities certain exemption can be given only which are necessary to achieve the object of the research will be exempted by the government.

This assessment is contextual and dependent on the nature of the research, the proposed law said.