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House panel to meet big tech, IT ministryon data protection
“The primary aim is to understand from stakeholders across the sector as to how citizens’ data is being protected,” a person familiar with the matter said, seeking anonymity.
: The parliamentary committee on IT will meet executives of technology firms such as Meta (earlier called Facebook), Amazon and Alphabet Google, and officials of the IT ministry to discuss concerns around safeguards for data protection as they undertake their first tour under the leadership of Shiv Sena MP Prataprao Jadhav.
The panel will be travelling to Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune and Mumbai between January 19 and 24, and holding several interactions with stakeholders on the subject of digital payments as well, documents show. In Bengaluru, it will meet representatives of Paytm, Razorpay, Juspay, American Express, CRED, Coinswitch and Paypal.
Panel members will also visit common service centres and meet officials from Prasar Bharati, the public service broaadcaster. The companies they will meet in Mumbai include Infosys, Tata Consultancy, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Tata Consultancy and HCL.
“The primary aim is to understand from stakeholders across the sector as to how citizens’ data is being protected,” a person familiar with the matter said, seeking anonymity.
Before the tour, the committee will hold a meeting in New Delhi in the first week of January to discuss the nascent Digital Sansad, or digital parliament project, and assess the functioning of the department of posts.
Digital payments and data protection are crucial as the government has just floated a draft legislation that is likely to impact the industry in a major way. The proposed bill has been criticised by several internet freedom activists for being vague and ambiguous, creating an imbalance between the rights of data principals and fiduciaries.
The new draft of the bill has attracted both praise and criticism, the first for its light touch and technology agnostic approach to regulating a dynamic space, and the second for the significant exemptions it grants to governments and government agencies when it comes to using the data of individuals.
The bill introduces the concept of deemed consent, or providing of personal data voluntarily that may be used for purposes other than that it was provided for. The provisions will apply to data uploaded online or digitized personal data, and does away with the data protection authority, instead introducing a data protection board as determined by the government.
