Data Privacy Day is an occasion to raise awareness among people on the issue: Prof. SK Shukla

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Today is World Data Privacy Day and we celebrate it for its lofty vision of raising awareness among the public about the best way privacy of citizens can be protected and promoted as well as highlighting the current problems and solutions available thereof. With the pandemic forcing virtually everyone to go digital, privacy has become even more important to implement. To do so today, we have with us from IIT-Kanpur, Prof. Sandeep K. Shukla and he will be providing us his insights on the subject. Here are edited excerpts from a conversation with HT Tech.

In India, based on the Puttaswamy case, Privacy is a fundamental right, and data that is personally identifying people such as name, address, phone number, photos, contact list, biometric data of a person -- are all subject to privacy rights. A person should have the right to own, control, and provide discretionary access to that data to parties he/she trusts. State or any corporation or other individuals have no right to breach or extract data without consent of the owner. Further, coercion should also be not legal to obtain data -- and that should apply to the states, corporations or other individuals. Unfortunately, most of these are violated in India daily. I was recently invited to talk at one government and one private university. They requested copies of my bank passbook first page, my PAN card and Aadhaar card. Now, these documents have more information on them than what they require to pay honorarium. Which means due to lack of any standards, laws, and data protection awareness -- they are asking for more information than is required. Similar incidents happen even after the Aadhaar verdict, which expressly prohibits requesting your Aadhaar card for services other