The arguments against a personal data privacy law are spurious. India needs robust data protection laws to enable growth without breaches of privacy
Vaishnaw said that as the PDP Bill gets finalised, on cross-border data flows, the government will ensure that the approach focusses on strengthening data protection without disrupting data flows
A data governance committee that had overseen Twitter's compliance with a Federal Trade Commission consent decree ceased to exist after two of its members were fired and three others resigned
Journalists from an investigative news outlet in El Salvador sued NSO Group in United States federal court Wednesday after the Israeli firm's powerful Pegasus spyware was detected on their iPhones. In January, the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, an internet watchdog, reported that dozens of journalists and human rights defenders in El Salvador had their cellphones repeatedly hacked with the spyware. Among them were journalists at the El Faro news site. These spyware attacks were an attempt to silence our sources and deter us from doing journalism, Carlos Dada, El Faro's co-founder and director, said in a statement released by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the El Faro journalists. We are filing this lawsuit to defend our right to investigate and report, and to protect journalists around the world in their pursuit of the truth, Dada said NSO Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the .
'Real process of openness' and listening to feedback in preparing legislation, he says
The US Census Bureau's chief is defending a new tool meant to protect the privacy of people participating in the statistical agency's questionnaires against calls to abandon it by prominent researchers who claim it jeopardises the usefulness of numbers that are the foundation of the nation's data infrastructure. The tool known as differential privacy was selected as the best solution available" against efforts by outside groups or individuals to piece together the identities of participants in the bureau's censuses and surveys by using third-party data and powerful computers, US Census Bureau Director Robert Santos said in a letter last week. Concerns about privacy have grown in recent years as cyber-attacks and threats of personal data being used for the wrong reasons have become more commonplace. Several prominent state demographers and academic researchers had asked the statistical agency in August to abandon using differential privacy on future annual population estimates, which
The government plans to include data regulation provisions in a new Digital India Act, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Friday. While speaking at an event at Foreign Correspondent Club on 5G, Chandrasekhar said the recently issued draft of Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) focuses on the protection of data of Indian citizens. It (DPDP) does not intend to appoint a regulator and create regulation for the data ecosystem. That is down the road when we create a new bill for Digital India Act. This is a bill which narrowly focuses on data protection of consumers, Chandrasekhar said. The government has issued a draft of a new data protection bill after it withdrew the previous version of the bill from the Lok Sabha in August citing several overlapping rules in the modified version of the bill. Talking about 5G, the minister said that the next-generation technology is based on open technology ecosystem which provides India with an opportunity to
The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill is a more forceful attempt to legislate a Chinese-style surveillance state in the world's largest democracy
Here is the best of Business Standard's opinion pieces for today
The new Bill, though better, gives govt too much discretion
Four out of 10 in LocalCircles study point finger towards insurance providers or banks
India has defended stricter regulations citing the need to safeguard users' interests in a country that has more than 760 million internet users
The government is likely to release new draft of data protection bill for public comments in a week, according to two government sources. The government had in early August withdrawn the personal data protection bill, which was first presented in late 2019. "The draft is expected to be issued in a week for public comment," an official source told PTI. Union telecom and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had said that the joint parliamentary committee which went through the original draft suggested 88 amendments to a bill of 91 sections, which led the government to decide that there was "no option" but to withdraw the original bill completely. He added that a lot of changes had taken place during the Covid pandemic, leading to newer learnings, which had to be incorporated in the laws. Non-profit Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) had said that the Data Protection Bill 2021 gave large exemptions to government departments, prioritises the interests of big corporations, and did not adequatel
NITI Aayog seeks that the rules related to deletion of other information collected from the passengers must be clearly set out in Digi Yatra's policy
Tech giant Samsung has introduced a "Maintenance Mode" feature for Galaxy devices with One UI 5 installed, which will protect users' personal data during servicing of the phone
Founder Pavel Durov claimed that the company has been keeping the user's data under surveillance for the past 13 years
The computer hacker who stole personal data of almost 10 million customers of a telecommunications company in one of Australia's worst privacy breaches used techniques to conceal their identity, actions and whereabouts, police said on Friday. Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Justine Gough, who heads cyber investigations, said the international probe, that includes the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, into the Optus cyberattack last week would be long and complex. "You can be assured that our very clever and dedicated cyber investigators are focused on delivering justice for those whose personal information has been compromised, Gough said. The government blames lax cybersecurity at Optus, Australia's second-largest wireless carrier, for the theft of current and former customers' personal information. Cybersecurity Minister Clare O'Neil described the crime as quite a basic hack. She said Optus, a subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, also known as Singte
Google on Thursday said that starting early next year, it will notify users if their personal information like phone number, email and home address appear in Search results
36% believe that rigorous data localisation requirements must be in place
The US Senate Homeland Security Committee grilled executives from Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter over privacy and moderation failures on their respective platforms in recent years