Key takeaways: Equal treatment should be prescribed for violations by government and private fiduciaries Recommendation for statutory body for media organisations harms media freedom Anonymisation of data needs more checks and balances before it can be shared "The one way to look at it is this is a carte blanche for censorship because if the government starts deciding why or when should the media be legitimate and accepting, or agreeing to publish something and not access personal data, in a way the government is completely controlling the narrative and which is very dangerous," Saikat Datta, founding partner at DeepStrat, a think tank, said during the session on 'Government Access to Data' at MediaNama's event 'Decoding India's Data Protection Bill' held on January 20, 2022. Datta was talking about the Joint Parliamentary Committee's recommendation to the government that a regulatory body supervise the media's use and access of data, in its report on the Data Protection Bill (DPB). Along with him, Anushka Jain, Associate Counsel at the Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights organisation; Jhalak Kakkar, the Executive Director of the Centre for Communication Governance National Law University Delhi, a think tank; and Vaneesha Jain, Associate Partner at law firm Saikrishna & Associates also shared their views in the session. The latest version of the Data Protection Bill in the Committee's report enables the government to process or access data without consent while imposing certain obligations on private data fiduciaries. The report also recommends sharing of non-personal data with the government,…
