Right to Privacy:
Every individual has his own secrets, talks, planning
etc. which they don not want to show, tell and discuss with others. So right to
privacy plays a important role in the freedom and liberty of a person and if our
fundamental right given under Article 21 of Indian Constitution,1950. We all are
individuals and have our unique thoughts, unique experiences in life so there
are many experiences in our life which we do not want others to know because
that might affect our image, people get a chance to blackmail us, that might
cause negative impression in a society and people will judge us in a negative
way and that might create a lack of opportunity for us at the place of job and
many other fields.
We also have some family privacy, every family have
different thinking different situation( like husband or wife's affair, fight
between family members, profit and loss in business, cruelty, mental
harassment and many other things ) and different rituals ( according to caste,
sex and religion ), so we don't want anyone to know about that and no person
have a right to question us on that and ask us our family personal matters and
if any person know about that then he/she should not hurt the privacy of that
family by telling others or interrupting herself/ himself. If someone forcefully
ask you about your personal incident and details or check your phone or computer
secretly without your permission even if that person is your family member or
friends then it is violation of your fundamental right which is under in Article
21 of Indian Constitution, 1950 and also punishable under Indian Penal Code,
1860.
Privacy gives us the power to choose our thoughts and feelings and who we share
them with.
Privacy protects our information we do not want shared publicly (such as health
or personal finances).
Privacy helps protect our physical safety (if our real time location data is
private).
Privacy helps protect us as individuals, and our businesses, against entities we
depend on or that are more powerful than us.
Privacy enables people to manage their reputations. How we are judged by others
affects our opportunities, friendships, and overall well-being. Although we
can't have complete control over our reputations, we must have some ability to
protect our reputations from being unfairly harmed. Protecting reputation
depends on protecting against not only falsehoods but also certain truths.
Knowing private details about people's lives doesn't necessarily lead to more
accurate judgment about people. People judge badly, they judge in haste, they
judge out of context, they judge without hearing the whole story, and they judge
with hypocrisy. Privacy helps people protect themselves from these troublesome
judgments.
In relationships, whether personal, professional, governmental, or commercial,
we depend upon trusting the other party. Breaches of confidentiality are
breaches of that trust. In professional relationships such as our relationships
with doctors and lawyers, this trust is key to maintaining candor in the
relationship. Likewise, we trust other people we interact with as well as the
companies we do business with. When trust is breached in one relationship, that
could make us more reluctant to trust in other relationships.
Personal data is essential to so many decisions made about us, from whether we
get a loan, a license or a job to our personal and professional reputations.
Personal data is used to determine whether we are investigated by the
government, or searched at the airport, or denied the ability to fly. Indeed,
personal data affects nearly everything, including what messages and content we
see on the Internet. Without having knowledge of what data is being used, how it
is being used, the ability to correct and amend it, we are virtually helpless in
today's world. Moreover, we are helpless without the ability to have a say in
how our data is used or the ability to object and have legitimate grievances be
heard when data uses can harm us. One of the hallmarks of freedom is having
autonomy and control over our lives, and we can't have that if so many important
decisions about us are being made in secret without our awareness or
participation.
People establish boundaries from others in society. These boundaries are both
physical and informational. We need places of solitude to retreat to, places
where we are free of the gaze of others in order to relax and feel at ease. We
also establish informational boundaries, and we have an elaborate set of these
boundaries for the many different relationships we have. Privacy helps people
manage these boundaries. Breaches of these boundaries can create awkward social
situations and damage our relationships. Privacy is also helpful to reduce the
social friction we encounter in life. Most people don't want everybody to know
everything about them – hence the phrase "none of your business." And sometimes
we don't want to know everything about other people — hence the phrase "too much
information."
Aadhaar Card Case:
In 2012, the retired Justice K.S. Puttaswamy filed a writ
petition in Supreme court which was against the mandatory of adhaar card for
every citizen, citizens have to link their adhaar card every where and the
biometric ID is also linked with adhaar card which was used in various govt.
schemes. But on other hand it was also hurting citizens privacy.
In sept. 2013, Supreme court passed a interim order that no citizen should be
forced to make adhaar card and no citizen should be suffered if he / she do not
have adhaar card even if it is mandatory by the govt. for providing certain
benefits.
On 24 march 2014, supreme court passed the another order which said that it is
all the agencies in India should not have that rule which create a mandatory
requirement of adhaar card for adhering any kind of benefits.
On March 2016, the supreme court's statement given in identity verification in
the case of Lokniti Foundation v. Union of India was interpreted by the BJP
govt. and the govt. made it mandatory that every adhaar card holder have to link
his / her mobile no. to it.
The central govt. issued a new guideline on June 2016 to the state that adhaar
card is to be linked with caste certificate and also a domicile.
On sept 2017, the constitutional bench upheld the hearing on the validity of
the adhaar cart and the bench held that the mandatory linkage of aadhaar card in
school admission, link of personal mobile no. and linking with the bank
account.
On Jan. 2018, the bench of five judges started the hearing of validity of aadhaar card again.
Final Judgement:
The High Court, in its last judgment on Aadhaar maintained its legitimacy and
further expressed that the Aadhar Act doesn't abuse the right to security when
an individual consents to share his biometric information. In any case, the High
Court banished the privately owned businesses from utilizing adhaar card with
the end goal of KYC validation. Simultaneously the zenith court held that adhaar
will in any case be being used for different purposes which would incorporate
Skillet card and ITR recording.
Certain significant parts of the judgment on account of K.S Puttaswamy VS
Association of India are to be seen from an itemized perspective, with the end
goal of better comprehension of the decision of the court on the issue of right
to protection concerning aadhaar.
While choosing the instance of K S Puttaswamy v. Association of India, a five
established adjudicator seat which was going by the then boss equity of India
Deepak Misra held that aadhaar would be required for documenting of personal
expense forms and furthermore for the allocation of Super durable record number
(Skillet). Henceforth, a citizen or an individual needing Skillet card can't
disregard from the aadhaar.
The summit court decided that aadhaar is as of now not a necessity for the
understudies showing up for CBSE, NEET and UGC tests. Furthermore, the court
likewise held that schools are at this point not permitted to look for aadhaar
with the end goal of confirmation.
With regards to benefiting of offices from the government assistance plans
brought by the public authority aadhaar is an absolute necessity. Likewise,
for making use government endowments aadhaar is an absolute necessity as the
sponsorships plans are brought into impact for the actual motivation behind
upliftment of poor people and individuals from the minimized areas.
The High Court, while conveying the judgment, felt free to strike down segment
57 of Aadhaar Act and named it illegal. By embraced this action, the High
Court guaranteed that no private substance or organization would now be able to
look for aadhaar subtleties from its workers.
While conveying the judgment, the top court additionally struck down the Public
safety Exemption under Aadhaar Act. This specific demonstration was attempted by
the public authority to in a roundabout way give more prominent security to a
person's aadhaar information and the equivalent was guaranteed via confining the
public authority admittance to it.
The High Court while conveying the judgment made an uncommon exemption for
youngsters and further held that no kid ought to be denied of the administrative
plans on the off chance that the person doesn't have aadhaar.
There are several additional implications of this judgement on matters
incidental to the principal issue decided by the Court:
- By expressly recognising an individual's right to privacy regarding his sexual
choices, the judgement is likely to have an impact on the petition pending
before the Supreme Court on the de-criminalisation of homosexuality in India.
- To the extent that the judgement has stated that the State cannot interfere in
the food choices of an individual it will have an impact on the various cases
protesting the ban on beef imposed by certain States.
- The judgement has also made several observations on the complex relationship
between personal privacy and big data, particularly in the context of how the
judicious use of these technologies can result in the State achieving its
legitimate interests with greater efficiencies.
- It has also recognized the impact that non-State actors can have on personal
privacy particularly in the context of informational privacy on the Internet.
While fundamental rights are ordinarily only enforced against actions of the
State, given the broad language of the judgement and the extent to which
informational privacy has been referred to in the judgement, there is concern
amongst certain experts that these principles will extend to the private sector
as well.
Recognizing the complexity of all these issues, the Court highlighted the need
to enact a comprehensive legislation on privacy and noted that the government
has already appointed a committee under the chairmanship of retired Justice BN
Srikrishna to look into these matters. Given this strong direction from the
Supreme Court, it is likely that the Government of India will double down on its
efforts to enact a comprehensive privacy legislation.
The immediate impact of this judgement on businesses is likely to be limited.
The decision was issued in order to set at rest an unsettled position in law
that had a bearing on a number of cases currently before various courts of the
land. Now that this has been done, each of those cases will be decided on their
merits relying on the wealth of opinions expressed in the present judgement.
Therefore, in the near future, we are likely to receive a series of judgements
on a wide range of matters that have a bearing on different aspects of privacy
which will offer greater clarity on the manner in which Indian courts will look
at these issues.
It is also clear, given the express directions of the Supreme Court in this
regard, that the government is likely to enact a comprehensive privacy law based
on the recommendations of the Justice Srikrishna committee. With this, the
privacy obligations of corporations towards their customers and employees is
likely to be clarified and a new regime for the protection of personal privacy
established.
Section 292 of IPC, 1860 says that the publication of any obscene material
through a book, pamphlet, paper, writing, drawing, painting, representation,
figure or any other object, shall be deemed to be obscene if it is lascivious or
appeals to the prurient interest or if its effect, or (where it comprises two or
more distinct items) the effect of any one of its items, is, if taken as a
whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt person, who are likely, having
regard to all relevant circumstances. Or any person published the private
pictures or videos of any person then that person will be punished for the
imprisonment up to 2 years and it that person commits this same crime again then
he will be punished for the imprisonment up to 5 years. It is also considered as
a cyber crime.
Right to life and privacy also include right to internet, as we all know that
internet is the becoming the basic need of the our daily life, our 84% of our
work is being done online, daily money transections, bank works, buying and
selling on a platform like amazon, flipkart, mintra etc. uploading news,
current affairs, recent judgements or any information related to history,
politics, online classes, office meetings etc. In short, internet has make
our work easier and faster and in today's life we all are in hurry and want our
work to be done as fast as possible.
And during covid 2020 and 2021 internet has
become more important for people because they were dong work from home and
students were having online classes so the usage of internet have increased a
lot. During this period the govt should have provided free internet to the
citizens and specially Delhi because CM Arvind Kejriwal primosed to provide free
wifi to delhi people but it more than 7 years now the AAP govt. have failed to
do it and on other hand the private compnies such as JIO and airtel have
increased their price suddenly for making a good profit coz they know that it
has become the basic need of the every age group people.
In right to privacy no person have a right to hack our social media accounts
otherwise it is punishable under section 43 of Information Technology act,
which says that if any person hacks the social media account of any person then
he/she should be punished by imprisonment of 3 years or fine up to 5 lakh or
both. And if that person miss uses the content of that person after hacking then
it will also include the cyber crime due to which that person might be punished
for imprisonment upto 7 years. And if due to that miss use if it affects the
image, respect or privacy of the person then that person can also claim
compensation for his/her loss under the criminal defamation which is punishable
under section 499 of Indian penal Code, that compensation will be calculated on
the bases of the social image, social relations, economic condition and the
amount of harm caused to that person.
The right to internet was added in constitution through the case of
Faheema
Shirni VS State of Karela, this judgement was given Kerala high court they said
that cell phones and web access
through it are an integral part of the everyday life. The court saw goals
embraced by the Unified Countries Basic liberties Gathering and the Overall Get
together which unequivocally highlight the way that how web access assumes a
vital part in getting to data and its nearby connection to instruction and
information. The court took the view that the option to have the option to get
to the web has been added something extra to the basic right to life and
freedom, just as protection under Article 21. The court added that it
establishes a fundamental piece of the foundation of the right to speak freely
of discourse and articulation. Instead of this is the contention of one of the
dads of the web, Mr. Vinton G. Cerf. He contended that while the web is vital,
notwithstanding, it can't be raised to the situation with a common liberty.
Innovation, as indicated by him, is an empowering influence of rights and not a
right all by itself. The significant exercise of the right to the right to speak
freely of discourse and articulation over the vehicle of web is reliant,
perpetually and inseparably, upon the admittance to the accessible framework.
Framework thusly relies on friendly and financial factors like the appropriation
of assets; the strategies of the State and its intercession in the idea of
guideline of assets.
On the off chance that i have the opportunity to talk and communicate my
thoughts, I should likewise have the vital means and roads to repeat something
similar. A financial and social precondition, hiding in the setting, to the
activity of the right under Article 19(1)(a) expects importance here. The job of
the State in empowering this precondition has been the subject of much
discussion in our nation and all the more so in the US under their First
Alteration law. Since the Hon'ble High Court has perceived the right to the
right to speak freely of discourse and articulation over the vehicle of web, we
might scrutinize its different choices to see whether the right to web access
can be perceived by the legal executive. The structural and clashing changes in
the law of the Hon'ble Summit Court under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(2) will
assist us with understanding this perspective.
Section 378 and 379 of Indian Penal Code talks about theft, if any person steels
your password, computer and phone data or get to know it through your phone or
computer without your permission or he steels it by hacking then it will be
considered as theft and he will be punished by the imprisonment up to 3 years.
The Personal Data Protection Bill was introduced 2019 and passed on 11 December
2019 in Lok Sabha, The Bill governs the processing of personal data by:
- Government.
- companies incorporated in India.
- foreign companies dealing with personal data of individuals in India.
Personal data is data which pertains to characteristics, traits or
attributes of identity, which can be used to identify an individual. The
Bill categorises certain personal data as sensitive personal data. This
includes financial data, biometric data, caste, religious or political
beliefs, or any other category of data specified by the government, in
consultation with the Authority and the concerned sectoral regulator.
This Bill gives rights to an individual are:
- To obtain confirmation from the fiduciary on whether their personal data
has been processed or not.
- seek correction of inaccurate, incomplete, or out-of-date personal data.
- have personal data transferred to any other data fiduciary in certain
circumstances.
- restrict continuing disclosure of their personal data by a fiduciary, if
it is no longer necessary or consent is withdrawn.
The State provides benefits to an individual, legal proceedings, quick respond
to medical emergency, prevent misuse of data, if the data is published then is
should be deleted from every platform possible, protect the transfer of personal
data outside of the country if the document contains national interest and if
any person spreads the govt. personal information which can harm the nation than
that person will be charged under UAPA act and get arrested without any legal
protection.
In District Registrar and Collector, Hyderabad v. Canara Bank MANU/SC/0935/2004:
A bench of two judges of the supreme court considered the provisions of the
Indian Stamp Act, 1899. Section 73, which invalidated by the high court,
empowered the collector to inspect registers, books and records, papers,
documents and proceedings in the custody of any public officer ‘to secure any
duty or to prove or would lead to the discovery of a fraud or omission'. Section
73 was in the following terms:
"Every public officer having in his custody any
registers, books, records, papers, documents or proceedings, the inspection
whereof may tend to secure any duty, or to prove or lead to the discovery of any
fraud or omission in relation to any duty, shall at all reasonable times permit
any person authorised in writing by the Collector to inspect for such purpose
the registers, books, papers, documents and proceedings, and to take such notes
and extracts as he may deem necessary, without fee or charge." After adverting
to the evolution of the doctrine of privacy in the US from a right associated
with property to a right associated with the individual 75, Chief Justice Lahoti
referred to the penumbras created by the Bill of Rights resulting in a zone of
privacy leading up eventually to a "
reasonable expectation of privacy"
In
D.S. Nakara & ors. vs. Union of India [1983]2 SCR 165, the case referred to
pension scheme looking to the goals for the attainment of which pension is paid
and the welfare State proposed to be set up in the light of the Directive
Principles of State Policy and Preamble to the Constitution it indisputable that
pensioners for payment of pension from a class. The division which classified
the pensioners into two classes on the basis of the specified date was devoid of
any rational principle and was both arbitrary and unprincipled being unrelated
to the object sought to be achieved by grant of liberalised pension and the
guarantee of equal treatment contained in Art. 14 was violated as the pension
rules which were statutory in character meted out differential and
discriminatory treatment to equals in the matter of computation of pension from
the dates specified in the impugned memoranda. The petitioners did not challenge
but sought the benefit of the liberalised pension scheme. Their grievance for
the denial to them of the same by arbitrary introduction of words of limitation.
There was nothing immutable about the choosing of an event as an eligibility
criteria subsequent to a specified date.
The court observed:
The absence of
precedent does not deter the court. Every new norm of socio-economic justice,
every new measure of social justice commenced for the first time at some point
of time in history. If at that time it was rejected as being without a
precedent, law as an instrument of social engineering would have long since been
dead. "A statute is not properly called retroactive because a part of the
requisites for its action is drawn from a time antecedent to its passing." "The
date of retirement of each employee remaining as it is, there is no question of
fresh commutation of pension of the pensioners who retired prior to 31st March
1979 and have already availed of the benefit of commutation.
It is not open to them to get that benefit at this late date because commutation
has to be availed of within the specified time limit from the date of actual
retirement." "The pension payable to a government employee is earned by
rendering long and efficient service and therefore can be said to be a deferred
portion of the compensation for service rendered. Pension also has a broader
significance in that it is a social-welfare measure rendering socio-economic
justice by providing economic security in old age to those who toiled
ceaselessly in the hey-day of their life."
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