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Right To Privacy
The Delhi High Court has observed that no public interest can be served by keeping information alive on the Internet after quashing criminal proceedings against a person and asked portals and search engines to mask the name of a man who has been acquitted in a case. The high court said the right to privacy is a fundamental right and forms an intrinsic part of Article 21 of the Constitution and the concept of right to privacy incorporates the right to be forgotten. "In the age of the internet, every piece of information that finds its way to the internet, gains permanence. The need to allow the masking of names of individuals acquitted of any offence or when criminal proceedings against such persons are quashed emanates from the most basic notions of proportionality and fairness," Justice Amit Mahajan said. The high court said while access to information is a fundamental aspect of democracy, the same cannot be divorced from the need to balance the right to information of the public .
Former Karnataka High Court judge Justice K S Puttaswamy, who played a pivotal role in declaration of right to privacy as a fundamental right from the Supreme Court in 2017, passed away at his Bengaluru residence on Monday. He was 98. Justice Puttaswamy was the lead petitioner who had moved the apex court in 2012 challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar scheme as being violative of the privacy right. The Aadhaar scheme subsequently received legislative sanction. In a landmark verdict in August 2017, a nine-judge bench through an unanimous verdict declared the right to privacy a fundamental right under Article 21 (protection of life and personal liberty) of the Constitution. It had underlined privacy to be "the constitutional core of human dignity". Born on February 8, 1926, Puttaswamy studied at Maharaja's College, Mysore and obtained a law degree from Government Law College, Bengaluru. He was enrolled as an advocate in January 1952 and became the Karnataka High Co
The Delhi High Court on Monday asked Microsoft, which owns 'Bing', and Google to seek a review of an order by a single judge directing them to identify and de-index non-consensual intimate images without requesting for their specific URLs, after the search engine giants filed an appeal against the ruling. The senior counsel for the appellants said unlike in cases of child sexual abuse material, non-consensual intimate images cannot be detected by their current technology and therefore it was not possible for them to comply with the order passed by the single judge in April 2023. Their senior lawyers assured the court a new technology is being developed but it has not yet reached a stage where it can detect such non-consensual content on its own. They said the search engines do not "host" any content, and once an objectionable content has been removed from the site hosting it, it will not appear in search results as well. Stating that "no one can ask you to do the impossible", a ben
Two influential lawmakers from opposing parties have crafted a deal on legislation designed to strengthen privacy protections for Americans' personal data. The sweeping proposal announced Sunday evening would define privacy as a consumer right and create new rules for companies that collect and use personal information. It comes from the offices of Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell and Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, both of Washington state. Cantwell chairs the Senate Commerce Committee while McMorris Rodgers leads the House Energy and Commerce Committee. While the proposal has not been formally introduced and remains in draft form, the bipartisan support suggests the bill could get serious consideration. Congress has long discussed ways to protect the personal data regularly submitted by Americans to a wide range of businesses and services. But partisan disputes over the details have doomed previous proposals. According to a one-page outline released Sunday, the bill worked
The draft Digital Personal Data Protection bill has skipped "Right to Privacy" in the preamble and provides unrestrained powers to the government, advocacy group CUTS International has claimed. CUTS said that the draft weakens the regulatory, supervisory, and enforcement architecture by replacing the previously proposed data protection regulator with a board that will be directly in control of the government. "Moving away from its previous version, the bill skips mention of the fundamental right to privacy in its preamble and narrows the scope of the law from data protection to digital personal data protection excluding non-personal data, which is rather desirable. In doing so, the bill takes away the categorisation of personal data, especially sensitive personal data, thereby painting all personal data with the same regulatory brush," CUTS said in a statement. The preamble of the draft Personal Data Protection Act 2018 mentioned of "right to privacy" as "a fundamental right and it