Apar GuptaOver the past week Meta Platforms, which owns and operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has taken a big market hit. Its shares dropped 25%, wiping off at least $240 billion off its market capitalisation. As of Monday, this trend continued with another dip of 4.7%, a cumulative stock price fall of 30% since its earnings report for the fourth quarter of 2021.
National security, at the cost of citizens’ privacy
After two years of deliberation, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 (JPC) tabled its report this week. The recommendations are appended with a redrafted version of the law, named the “Data Protection Bill, 2021”. The constitutional principle of a data protection law has been set out in the Justice K S Puttaswamy judgment by the Supreme Court of India that reaffirmed the fundamental right to privacy. Justice D Y Chandrachud stated that the “creation of such a regime requires a careful and sensitive balance between individual interests and legitimate concerns of the state.” There are three clear reasons why the Data Protection Bill, 2021 tilts clearly in favour of the central government and against the fundamental right to privacy.
Joint Committee presents its report on Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019
Pushback on Pegasus
The Supreme Court of India has appointed a committee presided by Justice (Retd.) R V Raveendran to inquire into the Pegasus revelations.
The judgment comes at a time when the principal author of the judgment and the Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, has noted, in the context of institutional independence, that when there is “a lot of discussion about the pressure from the executive, it is also imperative to start a discourse as to how social media trends can affect institutions.”
Here is a tacit acknowledgement of a general environment in which public trust is lacking in the judiciary. In this backdrop, the order of the court constituting the committee attains significance for three clear reasons.
Against Rules of the Game
Beyond such technicalities, the larger danger of the IT Rules glares through when the court observes that, “people would be starved of the liberty of thought and feel suffocated to exercise their right of freedom of speech and expression, if they are made to live in present times of content regulation on the internet with the Code of Ethics hanging over their head as the Sword of Damocles.”