The Delhi Police had recommended "relaxing" liabilities on law enforcement agencies under the Draft Personal Data Protection Bill 2018, a senior Delhi Police official told MediaNama on condition of anonymity. The source said that the liability on them is “not warranted” and “maybe the government will listen”. The official explained that law enforcement agencies examine data from multiple sources for one case; restrictions make it hard for them to carry out investigations. “All the restrictions make it difficult for us to zero in on the person with a specific data request [because we need data on multiple people]”. “Investigations aren’t directed at one thing from the very beginning. We reach the actual culprit after going through so many people and so much information, linking them together, drawing inferences,” said the official. "Our concern is [that] much liability is put on us to maintain the privacy of various individuals [during the course on an investigation]. And if we are made accountable for that, that’ll put enormous burden on investigation agencies,” the official said. The proposed Personal Data Protection Bill requires entities to obtain consent of individuals before accessing their personal data. 1. Anonymising tools, fake IDs are burdening investigators: “With more and more use of digital devices, this aspect has become even more important. Earlier, if a murder had taken place, we had the fingerprints and some other information and you could directly link it to the person. Now crimes are taking place where a person is using anonymising tools, bogus sites using…
