Data Protection and Privacy Laws

Abstract

Cyber security is an emerging area of intense activity that endeavors to provide innovative solutions to ensure uninterrupted communications and service availability. Today, business is customer centric and success of any business depends on user's personal preference, in temptation to have technological adaptation, we outdo on our personal and some time sensitive information very easily without giving much concern to privacy. There no longer exists the freedom to refuse public information concerning personal data, but rather the freedom resides in the ability to control the use made of personal data inserted in a computer program which constitute the new right to privacy today. Ideally, the provided information must be used with limited purpose only for which it has been collected but in reality this information is further processed, transmitted and exploited for unauthorized purposes without the permission of data owner.

India does not at the time of publication have substantive legislation covering data protection in the workplace. However, the Indian Government has announced its intention to enact a new data protection regime which will help European and US Companies when outsourcing to the sub-continent. The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) is in the process of drafting legislation to amend the country's existing Information Technology Act, 2000 with an intention of bringing the data protection regime up to the standard required by the EU Directive.

There is a lack of apposite privacy legislation model so it is extremely difficult to ensure shield of privacy rights but, in the absence of specific laws there are some few proxy laws or incident safeguard that the government uses for privacy concern under the Constitution of India, IT Act 2000 and so on. The labour specific legislations of India do not contain any provision with respect to protection of employee data or privacy of employees. There is a growing need to protect sensitive employee, customer, and business data across the enterprise wherever such data may reside.

This research paper is an attempt to examine the data protection and privacy issues with special reference to India and attempt to determine the attribution factor in case of  any violation.