The ‘right to be forgotten’, included in data protection bill tabled in Lok Sabha (GS Paper 2, Governance)
Why in news?
- Recently, the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023, was tabled in Parliament. Among its other features, the bill codifies the right to be forgotten.
- The proposed law comes six years after a landmark Supreme Court case, K.S.Puttaswamy vs Union of India, recognised the right to be forgotten as an aspect of the right to privacy that emanates from Article 21.
- Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud had said that informational privacy is a facet of the right to privacy and called for a law on data protection.
Recent Gujarat High Court verdict:
- The Gujarat High Court observed last week that once a court quashes a First Information Report (FIR) against an individual, the press should delete all news items connected to it.
- The division bench of Chief Justice Sunita Agrawal and Justice N.V. Anjaria made these observations while hearing an appeal filed by an NRI businessman, who wanted tech giant Google and news publications to remove news items related to a 2020 FIR that was eventually quashed.
What 2023 Bill says about right to be forgotten?
- The Bill provides for the right to be forgotten under the heading ‘right to correction and erasure of personal data’.
- According to Section 12 of the proposed law, a data principal will have the right to correction, completion, updating, and erasure of their personal data for the processing of which they have previously given consent.
- This includes consent given for the specified purpose for which the data principal has voluntarily provided their personal data to the data fiduciary, the entity that collects and stores the data.
- However, the proposed provision is subject to the condition that retaining the data is necessary for the specified purpose or for compliance with any existing law.
What court rulings say?
- Successive judicial rulings have recognised the right to be forgotten. In 2017, the Supreme Court held in the Puttaswamy case that the right to be forgotten was inherent to the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution.
- The bench referred to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in its ruling. It said that an individual who no longer wants their personal data to be processed or stored should be able to remove it from the system when it’s “no longer necessary, relevant, or is incorrect and serves no legitimate interest”.
- The court, however, qualified this by saying that the right cannot be exercised where the information or data is necessary for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information, for compliance with legal obligations, or for the performance of a task carried out in public interest.
- Such grounds, according to that ruling, includes public health, for archiving purposes in public interest, scientific or historical research purposes, statistical purposes, or for the establishment, exercise, or defence of legal claims.
Related cases:
- In the 2019 Zulfiqar Ahman Khan vs M/S Quintillion Business Media, the petitioner wanted two articles written about him on a news website removed. The articles were part of reportage on the #MeToo campaign.
- The Delhi High Court recognised “right to be forgotten” and the “right to be left alone” as being inherent aspects of the right to privacy and the articles were eventually pulled down.
- The right to be forgotten once again came up in the 2021 Jorawer Singh Mundy vs Union of India. In that case, Jorawer Singh, an American citizen, approached the Delhi High Court seeking removal of all public records of a case registered against him under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985.
- In his petition, Singh said that even though he was acquitted by the trial court in 2011, he was unable to find employment in the US because records of the ruling were available on Google, which put off employers who ran background checks on him.
What Indian laws say?
- While the ‘right to be forgotten’ isn’t a law yet, there are existing provisions in Indian laws that seek to prevent private data from being compromised.
- For instance, the Information Technology Act 2000 has a provision for compensation for failure to protect data. Under Section 43A of the law, an organisation is liable to pay damages to a person whose sensitive personal data has been compromised.
- Meanwhile, the 2022 amendment to Information Technology Rules, 2021, provides for the establishment of Grievance Appellate Committee(s) to allow individuals to appeal against the inaction of, or decisions taken by intermediaries on user complaints. The amendment also gives users the right to approach courts for remedy.
Where other countries stand?
Origin:
- Some countries have already put the concept of ‘right to be forgotten’ into practice. It was the Court of Justice of the European Union that first raised the subject in its 2014 ruling in Google Spain SL, Google Inc v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, Mario Costeja González. The case pertains to a Spanish man’s request that a 1998 advertisement on the forced sale of his house be taken down.
- In its ruling, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that it was incumbent upon an internet search engine operator “for the processing that it carries out of personal data which appear on web pages published by third parties”, thus upholding the right of erasure.
- The 2014 judgment set the precedent for the right of erasure under the European Union’s GDPR, which, under Article 17, provides the specific circumstances under which it can be applied.
Law in Philippines:
- The Philippines also recognised the right under its Data Privacy Act, 2012.
- Under the law, data subjects had the right to suspend, withdraw, or order the blocking, removal, or destruction of their personal information from the personal information controller’s filing system.
- The right can be exercised upon discovery and substantial proof that the personal information is incomplete, outdated, false, unlawfully obtained, used for unauthorised purposes, or is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected.
Musk’s Starlink, why the new sovereign of low-earth orbit is bad news?
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Context:
- In January 2023, Telegram channels in Russia were flooded with undated pictures of an unmanned Ukranian drone that included a retrofitted Starlink satellite dish made by SpaceX.
- The images, showed that the dish’s rear plastic casing had been hacked off to reduce its weight and make it easier to fit on the drone.
Network of Starlink:
- The integration of Starlink’s satellite internet service meant that the machine could be controlled from anywhere and be used for everything from surveilling Russian troops to coordinating military strikes.
- For most of the world, Starlink’s importance in Ukraine has hammered in how high-speed satellite Internet access is quickly becoming the most valuable strategic resource in a conflict or war-stricken region.
- Today, Musk’s Starlink service is the undisputed king of the section of space called low-earth orbit (LEO).
- Of the roughly 7,500 active satellites that orbit Earth today, more than half are Starlink satellites.
- There are a handful of competitors, some backed by governments: Viasat, OneWeb, Avanti, SES, Immarsat, and Iridium. But none of them come close to offering the convenience, speed or affordability of Starlink.
Significance:
- After the Russia-Ukraine war broke out in 2022, fibre network lines and cell towers were the first pieces of infrastructure to be destroyed, rendering Starlink as the lifeblood of Ukraine’s communication network.
- When Internet connectivity is deployed in a region, the nature of the technology is such that its operations aren’t controlled by the user, but by the company.
- In June 2023, the Pentagon approved a new deal to buy 500 new Starlink terminals for Ukraine that would reduce the company’s ability to interfere in operations.
Warping how the internet works?
- Traditional infrastructure works on a public-utility principle. The telecom companies don’t get to decide whether a particular region deserves no internet access because its inhabitants might use it for unsavoury purposes.
- Yet satellite internet companies get to insert themselves in key debates because of how the technology works and the lack of regulation.
- After the September 2022 protests in Iran, the government shut off internet access in large parts of the country. Musk quickly stepped in to turn on Starlink connectivity.
- Activists and protestors smuggled in satellite dishes, and to date over 100 Starlink terminals are active in Iran, although the government there has declared it illegal.
Reasons for Starlink’s monopoly:
- Elon Musk’s foresight is one; extremely light regulation from the Federal Communications Commission is another.
- The SpaceX’s partly reusable rockets give Starlink a non-stop elevator to get satellites into LEO in a relatively inexpensive manner. This is where its serious competitors trip up.
- Rival firm OneWeb, whose biggest shareholders are Bharti Airtel’s holding company and the U.K. government, were forced to abort a launch in Russia after it demanded the satellites not be used against Russia. OneWeb took a $230 million hit after Russia refused to return its satellites too.
Way Forward:
- The obvious solution is need more LEO satellite constellations; government, private or some combination of the two; that provide Internet access.
- In 2022, the European Union earmarked EUR 2.4 billion to set up a “sovereign” satellite constellation to be rolled out by 2027.
- China has its own plans to deploy a 13,000-satellite LEO mega constellation to rival Starlink.
Iraq eliminates trachoma as a public health problem
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Why in news?
- Iraq has now joined the league of 17 other countries that have eliminated trachoma, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced recently.
100-country target:
- The country is also the 50th to be acknowledged by the WHO for eliminating at least one neglected tropical disease globally.
- This major milestone is the halfway mark to the 100-country target set for 2030 in the WHO road map for neglected tropical diseases.
Iraq’s national trachoma programme:
- Iraq established its national trachoma programme in 2012 to coordinate the final domestic push against the disease.
- A trachoma surveillance system was developed to detect and manage cases within secondary and tertiary eye care facilities, as well as through school pre-enrollment and school eye screening programmes conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Education.
Burden of trachoma:
- Trachoma is the world’s leading infectious cause of blindness and is one of the conditions known as neglected tropical diseases.
- The disease is still known to be endemic in six countries of the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region.
- There has been substantial progress in the number of people in the region requiring antibiotic treatment for trachoma elimination purposes, which has fallen from 39 million in 2013 to 6.9 million in April 2023.
Symptoms and transmission:
- Trachoma starts off as a bacterial infection caused by Chlamydia trachomatis and can be easily treated. Over time, it causes the eyelashes to be pushed inward into the eye. So with every blink, they brush against the eyeball.
- This advanced form of trachoma is called trichiasis. Over time, if it’s not treated, trichiasis can lead to blindness.
- The disease thrives where there are water shortages, poor sanitation and infestations of flies, which are considered physical vectors of the disease.
SAFE strategy:
- To eliminate trachoma as a public health problem, WHO recommends the SAFE strategy, a comprehensive approach to reduce transmission of the causative organism, clear existing infections and deal with their effects.
- The SAFE strategy includes: Surgery to treat the blinding stage (trachomatous trichiasis); Antibiotics to clear the infection, particularly the antibiotic azithromycin; Facial cleanliness and Environmental improvement, particularly improving access to water and sanitation.
- The 17 other countries that have eliminated trachoma are: Benin, Cambodia, China, Gambia, Ghana, Islamic Republic of Iran, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malawi, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Togo and Vanuatu.
