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Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

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Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#61

Post by srean »

modi15 wrote: post #57
helloindia wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, Indian govt is making it mandatory for everyone to have AADHAR card(enrolment of which requires biometric scan) for basic services like opening bank account, provident fund, filing income tax returns etc, making it necessary for everyone to enroll for AADHAR. This judgement will be used for removal of AADHAR requirement.

Biometric is just stronger identity. This can be done in a weaker way using Passport/PAN card. Does Right to Privacy mean that the govt. cannot identify individuals ? How does it then provide differential services ?

Thats moot unless every significant access point has a means and financial viability to verify the biometrics.

Even with such existing 'weaker' identities we are nowhere close to the quality of service that such 'weak' identies can support. Lets address the problem and not divert the issue with "shiny tech... look a squirrel". I would be more sympathetic if we are already in the ballpark of the quality of service that these 'weak' identities can support and we are getting bottlenecked there.

To put it charitably, with Aadhaar we are optimizing something that is not the bottlneck.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#62

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

To HN readers outside India, who are unaware of the BG behind this historic judgement. It all started off with a series of litigations against the govt's mandate to link India's unique identity system - Aadhar (which includes biometric data) to existing Indian identification systems for different purposes.

In HN fashion, if you are interested to know about how the govt pulled of the huge technical overhead of storing billion records; it could be seen in talk here by it's chief architect - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08sq0y8V1sE

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#63

Post by _jgdh »

vkrm wrote: post #39
_jgdh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you confusing the Indian govt/courts with some other country?

This is currently a grey area. All ISPs in India have to abide by their licensing terms with the Department of Telecommunication which restricts encryption to 40 bit RSA or equivalent. Any higher grade encryption can only be used with special permission and requires the decryption keys to be submitted to the DoT. Whether or not this restriction also applies to end users and non-ISP organizations hasn't yet been teste…

You have a link to that? Either way, I'm not sure how that would be implemented, other than outright blocking sites that are HTTPS-only. But I don't think blocking Google, Facebook, Whatsapp and other major websites is going to fly. I have no doubt that the Indian government would like to read people's communications and internet history, but that's not possible today.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#64

Post by msravi »

product50 wrote: post #55
msravi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as why getting carried away by the words fundamental right is something to be cautious about. Because people sometimes tend to equate "fundamental" with "absolute", and assume that the right cannot be taken away from them under any circumstances. That is not correct. > You didn't mention what type of restrictions can be put What is a "reasonable restriction" has not been defined unequivocally - it is subject to int…

Apart from declaration of emergency, which is an exception circumstance, when has the fundamental right been taken away? Why are you giving extreme examples to prove your point? The last time fundamental rights were taken away from Indian citizens was in 1975.

Fundamental rights are not absolute, in the sense that reasonable restrictions can be placed on them.

An example is Article 21 of the constitution: No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law

So a person's right to life or personal liberty can be restricted according to procedure established by law. That is why you find people in prison. Their fundamental right to liberty is restricted by a procedure established by law. Similarly, the fundamental right to privacy can be restricted by a procedure established by law.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#65

Post by thanksgiving »

product50 wrote: post #56
vkrm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Reasonable restrictions" are not very well defined in the Indian constitution. They are quite broad and open to interpretation on a case-by-case basis. "... the State can impose reasonable restrictions in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incit…

Can reasonable restrictions be put on fundamental rights as well? So you are suggesting that the right to life has reasonable restrictions -- that in order to be friendly to a foreign state, the nation state can murder their citizens?

Sorry for being off topic but I believe fundamental rights do not and should not require a citizenship test. If we hold these rights to be fundamental, we must not be willing to tolerate violations of such rights of any person in our jurisdiction.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#66

Post by srean »

product50 wrote: post #56
vkrm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Reasonable restrictions" are not very well defined in the Indian constitution. They are quite broad and open to interpretation on a case-by-case basis. "... the State can impose reasonable restrictions in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incit…

Can reasonable restrictions be put on fundamental rights as well? So you are suggesting that the right to life has reasonable restrictions -- that in order to be friendly to a foreign state, the nation state can murder their citizens?

> So you are suggesting that the right to life has reasonable restrictions

Please read what he said, he is not saying that, the thing he quoted is, and that thing I believe is the constitution as it stands now.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#68

Post by devnonymous »

modi15 wrote: post #20
ruytlm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume the counter-argument would be that a way should be found to provide food, clothing, shelter, etc., without violating privacy. The implication seems to be that it's the collection of personal information in excess of that needed to perform the function appropriately - why do you need iris scans and fingerprints, when a name and a photo would arguably be sufficient?

How can you provide food/clothing shelter without violating privacy ? The person has to identify that he is needing assistance from the state for the state to be able to provide. The state needs iris/fingerprint because that is the only way for them to check your claim of who you are and you do not already have the means to access food/shelter by yourself.

Uh huh, and what if I do not want to depend of the government to provide me with food, clothing and shelter since I am able to earn those for my family and me (reducing the social security burden on the government), should I not have the freedom to excuse myself from these alleged social benefit schemes.

Your argument and many similar ones are now boring and have been countered enough times already.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#69

Post by fwx »

Can someone more well-versed in Indian law help me understand : Does this ruling prevent collection of biometrics or restrict it somehow under the Aadhar system?

Also, I recall the Indian Government was pushing Aadhar Pay - a biometric fingerprint scan based PoS payment / verification system (likely it is already deployed, I don't live there so I don't know). What happens to that now?

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#70

Post by ahamedirshad123 »

eklavya wrote: post #38
srean wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why would that change with Aadhaar ? Corruption is hardly a technology issue, especially in an environment where corruption is so passe and enjoys patronage from the entirety of the polictical spectrum. Example, to disrupt the blackmarket of kerosene they started dyeing it, and that mattered zilch, because people were selling and buying dyed kereosene in the blackmarket without batting an eyelid. Everyone looked…

It's not a matter of would, it already has. So many subsidy/benefits accounts have been closed. Just search for news stories on this.

Like this one?

http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2017/05/24/in-two-villages-in-u...

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