Category: Right to Privacy

RELIANCE JIO: REGULATORY AND PRIVACY IMPLICATIONS

Posted on by Balaji Subramanian

Ed. Note.: This post, by Sayan Bhattacharya, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.

In the world of technology dominated by a power struggle in terms of presence and absence in data circles, Reliance Jio has probably made the biggest tech news of the year with its revolutionary schemes. By adopting a loss-leader strategy of immediate loss and ultimate dominance, Reliance Jio has promised its subscribers stellar features like free voice calls, extremely cheap data packages, abolition of national roaming  charges and striking down extra rates on national holidays on shifting to its network. This is set to significantly affect competition by taking India’s data scenario from a data scarcity to data abundance mode.

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LEGAL ISSUES SURROUNDING SEARCH ENGINE LIABILITY

Posted on by Balaji Subramanian

Ed. Note.: This post, by Sayan Bhattacharya, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.

Search engines which are quintessential to our internet experience are mechanisms of indexing and crawling through data to provide us with a list of links which are most relevant to both our present and past searches. Figuratively, its functions range from directing users to seats in a movie hall to being the very seat in the movie hall.

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The Right to Be Forgotten – An Explanation

Posted on by Balaji Subramanian

Ed. Note.: This post, by Ashwin Murthy, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.

The right to be forgotten is the right of an individual to request search engines to take down certain results relating to the individual, such as links to personal information if that information is inadequate, irrelevant or untrue. For example, if a person’s name is searched on Google and certain information appears relating to that person, the person can request Google to remove that information from the search results. This has its largest application in crime and non-consensual pornography (revenge porn or the distribution of sexually explicit material depicting a person without their consent). If X committed a petty crime and a person searching X’s name finds this petty crime, it leads to an obvious negative impact to X, in terms of job prospects as well as general social stigmatisation. X can ask the providers of the search engine to remove this result, claiming his right to be forgotten. The right is not necessarily an absolute right – in its current stage of discussion it merely applies to information that is inadequate, irrelevant or untrue and not any and all information relating to the person. Further there lies a distinction between the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten – the right to privacy is of information not available to the public while the right to be forgotten is removal of information already available publicly.

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Privacy – A right to GO?

Posted on by Balaji Subramanian

Ed. Note.: This post, by Ashwin Murthy, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.

For centuries rights have slowly come into existence and prominence, from the right to property to the right to vote and the right against exploitation. In the increasingly digital world of interconnection, the latest right to gain immense popularity is the right to privacy. This right entails the right to be let alone and more importantly the right to protect one’s own information – informational privacy. Thus armed with the right to privacy, one can limit what information others have access to and may use, and thus what information corporations might have or what is up on the Internet. This right to privacy comes in direct contact with applications downloaded on phones, which often ask for permissions to various information on the phone – a device which already possesses a great deal of information of the owner, including the location of the user, their phone number, their emails, their chat conversations and their photos. Applications often ask, either explicitly or in their terms and conditions, for permissions to access varying degrees of the information on the phone, sometimes in a rather unexpected fashion (such as a flashlight app asking for permissions to location), and more recently these apps have been singled out for their questionable privacy settings.

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AADHAR AND THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY

Posted on by Balaji Subramanian

Ed. Note.: This 101, by Vishal Rakhecha, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.

The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 or simply the Aadhaar Act passed in the Lok Sabha to facilitate the transfer of benefits and services to the individuals. This is done by giving them Unique Identification Numbers. At first glance Aadhaar seems like a brilliant scheme to ensure that the tax payer’s money does not end in the wrong hands. But the provisions in the Act raise some serious concerns about the way it can be used by the state to encroach upon the right to privacy of individuals. Apart from this the centrally maintained system to save the data in the Central Identities Data Repository makes it vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The huge uproar against the government is also because of the way Aadhaar was passed, as a money bill, despite the fact that it does not qualify for the same.

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