The data protection committee headed by Justice BN SriKrishna on Friday said that individual privacy must be protected at any cost and not treated as property, adding that, it is a milestone in the journey of data evolution.

The panel submitted its report to the government on suggestions for a data protection law.

According to the draft bill, the panel has defined conditions deemed fit for the state to seek personal data, adding that the approach followed in collecting data by the digital entities will have fiduciary responsibilities.

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The committee feels the need to amend 70 laws, including Aadhaar Act, IT Act and RTI Act to create a strong data protection law.

"In the context of personal data, this would pertain to such critical data as those relating to Aadhaar number, genetic data, biometric data, health data, etc. Only such data relating to critical state interests must be drawn up for exclusive processing in India and any such obligations should be limited to it,” the panel added.

The report elaborates on the consent, recall of consent and ownership of data and added that an elaborate mechanism has been suggested for addressing grievances.

On data localisation, the panel added, it has defined circumstances where data must be stored locally and in case of data stored overseas, a mirror copy should be available in the country.

Earlier this year, Facebook, which has over two billion users globally, including over 200 million in India, had faced backlash on the Cambridge Analytica data breach issue where the UK-based data mining firm was accused of harvesting personal user data of 87 million global users of Facebook illegally to influence polls in several countries.

(With inputs from PTI)

First Published:Jul 27, 2018 5:15 PM IST