Tag: Data Retention

Data Protection of Deceased Individuals: The Legal Quandry

Posted on by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

This post has been authored by Purbasha Panda and Lokesh Mewara, fourth and fifth years from NLU Ranchi. It discusses the data protection laws for deceased individuals, and the legal justifications for post-mortem privacy. 

Post-mortem privacy is defined as the right of a person to preserve and control what formulates his/her reputation after death. It is inherently linked with the idea of dignity after death. The first type of opinion with respect to post-mortem privacy raises the question of how there can be a threat to the reputation of a person if he no longer exists. However, there is another school of thought which argues  that when a person’s public persona or reputation is harmed after death, he might not be defamed but the ante-mortem person could. Another question that comes up, is that when a person dies, does the interest of the dead person that survives become the interest of others or is it actually his interests alone that are protected or is it both the possible scenarios?

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Standardizing the Data Economy

Posted on by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

This piece has been authored by Namratha Murugeshan, a final year student at NALSAR University of Law and member of the Tech Law Forum.

In 2006, Clive Humby, a British mathematician said with incredible foresight that “data is the new oil”. Fast forward to 2019, we see how data has singularly been responsible for big-tech companies getting closer to and surpassing the trillion-dollar net worth mark. The ‘big 4’ tech companies, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have incredibly large reserves of data both in terms of data collection (owing to the sheer number of users each company retains) and in terms of access to data that is collected through this usage. With an increasing number of applications and avenues for data to be used, the requirement of standardizing the data economy manifests itself strongly with more countries recognizing the need to have specific laws concerning data.

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Privacy on Facebook: An Absolute Prerequisite

Posted on by Jitesh Anand

[Image Source: http://flic.kr/p/86Q3gF]

Social networking websites have taken the Internet by storm in today’s organic society. One such website, Facebook, with over a billion users has often been referred to as the ‘third largest country’ of the world. The rise of Facebook to soaring heights can be credited to first, the intensive monitoring of its users which enables the company to provide them tailor made services, targeted advertising and second, of course to Metcalfe’s Law, which in common parlance means that the more users there are on a social networking site, the more attractive it will be to people who are contemplating joining. In this blog post, I have tried to analyze Facebook’s privacy policies along the lines of the National Privacy Principles. These principles have been comprehensively dealt with by Justice A.P. Shah in his ‘Report on Privacy’, published by the Planning Commission of India. They also closely tie to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Privacy Principles and European Union’s Data Protection Directives.

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Data Retention Protocols: A Critical Appraisal of the Telecom Surveillance Apparatus in India and Abroad (Part II)

Posted on by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR
The second post in the two-part series on Data Retention laws in India and abroad, by Balaji Subramanian. The first part can be found here.

In Foreign Lands: US and the EU

Earlier, I’ve given a broad picture of the data retention scenario in India. Now, I attempt to draw a comparison between India and other, more “advanced” jurisdictions such as the US and the EU.

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Data Retention Protocols: A Critical Appraisal of the Telecom Surveillance Apparatus in India and Abroad (Part I)

Posted on by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR
The following is the first in a two-post series by Balaji Subramanian on Data Retention, a second-year student at NALSAR. Balaji is quite interested in Technology and Cyber Law, and has worked on issues ranging from Cyber Forensics to Data Retention., interning with CIPRA at NLSIU and Tanikella Rastogi Associates on related issues. 

Descriptively, data retention refers to the gathering and storing of information relating to subscribers’ use of telecommunications networks. This storage happens at a remote location, inaccessible to the user whose activities are the origin of the stored data. Typically, data retention protocols require the continuous collection of certain parameters from internet users and the maintenance of comprehensive records of user activity, in one form or another. Retention can be done at the ISP level, as a commercial decision on the part of the service provider, or at the regulatory level, as a national policy decision on the part of the State in order to achieve larger goals of law enforcement and public order. Over the course of two posts, I will attempt to construct a brief critique of the policies adopted, first narrating the Indian stance and then using contemporary global trends as a yardstick against which this stance can be measured.

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