Govt Committed To Ensure Right To Privacy, Surveillance Reports Of Citizens Misleading: Ravi Shankar Prasad
Mumbai: Minister of Communications and Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Thursday that the report by UK-based research firm Comparitech, highlighting that India ranks behind only Russia and China when it comes to surveilling citizens, appear to be flimsy and questionable.
On Thursday Ravi Shankar told that the govt. Of India is committed to protecting the fundamental right of each and every citizen of this country from concerns of privacy, and the reports stating surveillance of citizens are absolutely misleading.
“There are adequate safeguards to ensure that no innocent citizen is harassed or his or her privacy breached… The government is committed to protecting the fundamental rights of citizens, including the right to privacy,” Prasad said.
“From the media reports, the basis on which such a conclusion is drawn appears flimsy and questionable.
Absence of data protection bill and a data protection authority as the regulator has been cited but there are suitable provisions under the IT Act and work is in progress to bring in a law for data protection,” he further added.
The government’s request to WhatsApp regarding traceability without compromising on encryption has been wrongly projected as a possible privacy intrusion.
“These attempts to malign the government of India for reportedly surveilling citizens are completely misleading,” Prasad said.
Prasad claimed that it is the age of data, and “availability of data helps in framing good policies”.
Additionally, there are multiple layers of security at the physical level in UIDAI Data Centres and it is being managed by armed CISF personnel round the clock.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and like us on Facebook for the latest updates and interesting stories.
