New Delhi: Expert committee appointed by the Supreme Court under Justice B N Srikrishna presented its concept paper on drafting a new law on data protection on Monday.
The white paper identified seven key areas that need to be included in the law and suggested plausible contexts that India should work on to further strengthen its online security front.
"The law must be technology agnostic. It must be flexible to take into account changing technologies and standards of compliance," said the report identifying the first necessity that the law needs to have.
Data security assumed unignorable importance when thousands of State Bank of India ATMs were compromised last year and an equal number of debit and credit cards were blocked.
One of the most important recommendations that the panel came up with is "informed consent". "Consent is an expression of human autonomy. For such expression to be genuine, it must be informed and meaningful. The law must ensure that consent meets the aforementioned criteria," added the report.
The 10-member panel, formed under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, had been holding regular meetings since August this year after the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court referred to the importance of the pending framework in its landmark Right to Privacy verdict.
Srikrishna had earlier told News18 that India was in urgent need of a data protection law as the current laws weren't sufficient.
The other recommendations that the panel submitted are, "holistic application, data minimization, controller accountability, structured enforcement and deterrent penalties."
The report also identified international best practices that should be a lesson for the Indian law citing places such as the European Union, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and South Africa.
Members on the panel include Ajay Kumar, Additional Secretary, MeitY, Rama Vedashree, CEO, Data Security Council of India, Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIM, Indore and Rajat Moona, director, IIT, Raipur. Recently, the chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, also sent guidelines on data privacy to the committee.
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