India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) has set up a committee to look into data protection in India, even as the government of India argues in the Supreme Court that there is no fundamental right to privacy. The committee has 8 weeks to give its recommendations. The committee consists of Justice BN Srikrishna, Former Judge, Supreme Court of India, as its Chairperson, and the following members: - Aruna Sundarajan, Secretary, Department of Telecom - Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO, UIDAI - Ajay Kumar, Additional Secretary, Meity - Rajat Moona, Director, IIT Raipur (also CDAC) - Gulshan Rai, National Security Co-ordinator - Rishikesha T. Krishnan, Director, IIM, Indore - Arghya Sengupta, Research Director, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy - Rama Vedashree, CEO, Data Security Council of India Joint Secretary, Meity, is the 'Member convener'. The committee will look into issues of data protection in India, and make specific suggestions for the consideration of the Central Government on principles to be considered for data protection in India, and suggest a draft data protection bill. It might "co-opt other members in the group for their specific inputs". MediaNama's take 1. Privacy, data protection, data security: My sense is that there has been a concerted attempt to delineate Privacy from data protection and data security. Data Security is about looking into the security of databases and preventing unauthorised access, while data protection has been about looking into the policy aspects of access to data: who gets access to data, when and how, and…
