Right to privacy in digital era
At the height of the Communist oppression in East Europe in the 1970s, when individual liberties had been entirely crushed in the name of the State, a Polish poet made an impassioned plea for his right to privacy. Instead of the Marxist slogan “Workers of this world, you have nothing to lose but your chains!”, which was then chanted with tedious and predictable unison, he simply wrote: “Workers of this world, leave me alone!” That basic human proclivity to privacy, in areas where neither the State nor non-State actors, or for that matter anybody, has the right to intrude, has been accorded by the Supreme Court’s latest judgment the status of a fundamental right, under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution. Echoing the plaintive but powerful plea of the Polish poet, Justice Chandrachud pronounced: “Privacy postulates the reservation of a private space for the individual, described in the right to be let alone. Similarly, while discussing the issue of privacy, the Supreme Court has pronounced on several other fundamental issues that are of vital interest to a democratic society, such as the beef ban, abortion rights, sexual orientations, euthanasia, and even — like the wish of the Polish poet — the right to be left alone. On matters like the beef ban, Justice Chelameshwar said: “I don’t think anybody would like to be told by the State what they should eat or how they should dress…” On abortion, the court was of the view that “a woman’s freedom of choice whether to bear a child or abort her pregnancy fall in the realm of privacy”.
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