Snooping Order: Security of India Doesn’t Need to Clash with Privacy of Indians
The Ministry of Home Affairs through its order has granted powers of "interception, monitoring, and decryption of any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer" to 10 central agencies to protect security and sovereignty of India. At the same time, the order threatens to risk privacy of 130 crore Indians as “unfettered access” to any kind of data without a legal process in place poses great risk of misuse and abuse. The privacy judgment did outline the tests of legality, legitimate aim, proportionality and procedural safeguards that are fundamental aspects which require qualification by the state before disclosure of citizen’s data. Oversight Mechanism Our intelligence agencies, although accountable to a different set of laws through regulatory mechanisms, do not come under the purview of an ‘oversight mechanism’, including Parliament or the General Comptroller of India. The Kargil Committee, formed in 1999 post war, highlighted the need for tasking, monitoring and evaluating the performance of intelligence agencies, and these were considered necessary to protect national security.
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