Data Privacy in India: A Legal Analysis with Special References to Whatsapp Snooping
- Sidharth Chamarty
- July 12, 2020
Content :
This paper intends to give an introduction to laws relating to data privacy and data protection in India, which is a fairly nascent topic to broach, with special reference to privacy concerns and mechanisms of the popular instant-messaging app WhatsApp and how it connects to the present legal environment in India. The paper discusses government and private/non-state actor surveillance in India, and the various legal safeguards (or, in some measures, the lack thereof) to prevent the misuse of the same, again, in the context of possible government surveillance of WhatsApp, brought into the spotlight due to the recent Pegasus scandal and the government’s repeated demands to push WhatsApp to give up its end-to-end encryption feature. The paper also attempts to give the topics at hand an international perspective by throwing light on the laws that prevail in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, regarding data surveillance and privacy.
