Search Results for: data protection

The Right to Be Forgotten – An Explanation

Posted on by Veera Mahuli

(Image Source: https://flic.kr/p/9RovZB)

This is the first in a two-part post on the Right to be Forgotten. This post is part of our 101 series of posts, which seek to explain the issue at hand, and the next post shall address the issue and the debate surrounding it in more detail.

In 2010, a Spanish citizen filed a complaint against a Spanish newspaper, Google Spain and Google Inc. with the national Data Protection Agency. The complaint objected to an auctioned notice of his repossessed home that kept coming up on Google’s search results.  The proceedings against the petitioner had been fully resolved and he claimed the reference to the proceedings on Google to be entirely redundant and a violation of his privacy rights. The Spanish court referred the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union. 

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IT AMENDMENT RULES 2022: An Analysis of What’s Changed

Posted on by Tech Law Forum NALSAR

[This post is authored by Sohina Pawah, a second-year student at the NALSAR University of Law, who is also an Editor for the TLF]

INTRODUCTION

Back in June 2022, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (“MeitY”) had first released the proposed amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (“IT Rules 2021”) for public consultation. Recently, the MeitY notified the Amendments to Parts I and II of the IT Rules 2021 by introducing the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2022 (“IT Amendment Rules, 2022”). The IT Amendment Rules 2022 aim at the regulation of social media intermediaries by increasing the burden of their compliance, and ensuring that the safe harbours provided to them are not abused. On the whole, the Rules aim at strengthening the protective framework for the “netizens’ interests” by prioritising their fundamental rights under Articles 14,19, and 21 of the Indian Constitution.

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Traversing the Contours of Safe Harbour: Comparison of India and US (Part II)

Posted on by Tech Law Forum NALSAR

This is the second part of a two-part post authored by Kavya Jha and Ananya Singh, fourth-year law students at RGNUL, Punjab. The first part can be found here.

In light of the ongoing attempts to provide intermediaries with the right degree of protection, this essay seeks to juxtapose the Indian approach to safe harbour protection with the American approach. It argues that both these jurisdictions have taken opposite but extreme approaches: while India has narrowed down the safe harbour protection from what was originally intended by the legislature, the American courts have interpreted the safe harbour provisions so expansively that an imbalance has been created in favour of the intermediaries. The essay, thus, recommends a balanced approach to providing safe harbour protection to intermediaries.

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Traversing the Contours of Safe Harbour: Comparison of India and US (Part I)

Posted on by Tech Law Forum NALSAR

This is the first part of a two-part post authored by Kavya Jha and Ananya Singh, fourth-year law students at RGNUL, Punjab. 

In light of the ongoing attempts to provide intermediaries with the right degree of protection, this essay seeks to juxtapose the Indian approach to safe harbour protection with the American approach. It argues that both these jurisdictions have taken opposite but extreme approaches: while India has narrowed down the safe harbour protection from what was originally intended by the legislature, the American courts have interpreted the safe harbour provisions so expansively that an imbalance has been created in favour of the intermediaries. The essay, thus, recommends a balanced approach to providing safe harbour protection to intermediaries.

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Regulating Real Money Games: Examining Alternatives to Prohibition (Part II)

Posted on by Tech Law Forum NALSAR

[This is the second part of a two-part post authored by Mitali Kshatriya, a fourth-year law student at RMLNLU, Lucknow. Part I can be found here]

In Part I, the article highlighted the incongruous legislative framework for regulating real money gaming sector followed by the possibility of introducing central laws for regulating the sector. In Part II, the article aims to highlight various regulatory measures which can be adopted to mitigate adverse effects of real money gaming without impeding the growth of the sector.

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The Insurtech Revolution: What Lies Ahead for India? (Part I)

Posted on by Tech Law Forum NALSAR

[This post has been authored by Angeline Priety and Nisha Nahata, fourth year law students at Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar. Part II can be found here.]

In recent times, data driven sectors have been going over and beyond to harness technology to consolidate, utilise and analyse data from various sources for efficient functioning. In the Insurance industry, these efforts have led to the creation of the Insurtech sector. In Part I of this essay, the authors shall elucidate the emerging models of insurtech and the Indian legal framework governing it. In Part II we shall highlight the challenges that the Insurtech industry faces and proposes recommendations to navigate through them.

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Fighting “Unlawful” Content: Moderation and the New Intermediary Guidelines

Posted on by Tech Law Forum NALSAR

[This post has been authored by Sanjana L.B., a 4th year student at Symbiosis Law School, Hyderabad.]

Introduction

In January 2021, India had the highest number of Facebook users at 320 million. This was followed by the United States of America (“USA”), with 190 million users. As of February 2021, about 53.1% of the population of Myanmar were active social media users. These numbers are not only indicative of internet penetration, but also of the audience for user-generated content on platforms like Facebook. This article focuses, firstly, on the need for content moderation on social media by looking at harmful precedents of inefficient moderation, and secondly, on the Indian Government’s approach to content moderation through the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (“Intermediary Guidelines”) and recent developments surrounding the regulation of social media content in India.

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Breaking Encryption and Violating User Privacy: Is there a Way Out?

Posted on by Tech Law Forum NALSAR

[This post has been authored by Shamik Datta and Shikhar Sharma, first year students at NALSAR University of Law and National Law School India University respectively.]

How the IT Rules break End-to-End Encryption

End-to-end encryption ensures that intermediaries or third parties don’t have access to the content of the message and identity of the communicating parties. However, Rule 4 (2) of the new Informational Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 specifies that all ‘significant social media intermediaries’ must enable the traceability of the first originator of a message. The collected information may be used if and when required by a court of competent jurisdiction or competent authority under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The information derived via the breaking of end-to-end encryption may be used to investigate offences abetted or caused by the spread of fake news. This includes open-ended offences like disturbing ‘public order’, which are broad in their scope, and thus, leave a wide scope for their blatant misuse and arbitrary interpretation. The proviso to Rule 4(2) states that intermediaries are not required to reveal the content of the message, or any other related information. However, under Rule 4 of the IT (Procedure and Safeguards for Interception, Monitoring and Decryption) Rules, 2009, the government possesses the power to demand the revelation of the content of electronic messages. The government could, upon identifying the user under the 2021 Rules, ask the intermediary to decrypt the content of other messages of the same user under the 2009 IT Rules citing “public order” (for example, citing the history of the user as a fake news spreader). This would render the proviso to Rule 4(2) of the 2021 Rules meaningless. Therefore, when the information about the first originator is gathered via enabling traceability and powers to disclose the content of the message is exercised, it leads to a break in end-to-end encryption. This destroys the very purpose of the cryptographic keys and encryption protocols developed over the years to encode the messages and safeguard the identity of their sender. 

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Mapping the rise of the surveillance state amid the COVID-19 crisis

Posted on by Tech Law Forum NALSAR

[This post has been authored by Noyanika Batta, a Senior Associate at Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan Attorneys. She is a 2018 graduate from Gujarat National Law University.]

There exist dichotomous views on the usefulness of surveillance and its relationship with public health. The disease control strategies adopted by the states often necessitate extensive surveillance practices having an overbearing and intrusive effect on the daily lives of its citizens. The debate thus lies in striking the right balance between public health and the need to strengthen public health infrastructures vis-a-vis privacy protection for individual citizens. With the rapid spread of COVID19 debilitating economies and causing health systems across the globe to crumble, it became imperative for governments and organizations to take immediate actions to protect its people. This in turn saw a fierce boom in surveillance technologies dedicated towards monitoring whole populations, with governments trying to chart the virus’ trajectory from broad swathes of personal data. This article seeks to examine the disproportionate risks to data privacy caused by the use of invasive and pervasive technologies such as contact tracing across the world.

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