Cybercrimes: Consensus emerging on balance between people’s right to privacy and need for regulation: Union Minister
The Hindu
‘The change has to be substantial, significant, fundamental and structural,’ he says at the second national conference on ‘Cyber Crime Investigation & Digital Forensics’.
Stressing the need for an overhaul of the legal structure to tackle the threat of cybercrimes, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday said a consensus on striking a balance between the people's right to privacy and the need for regulation to protect their right to live in a peaceful manner was now emerging in the country.
The Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology was speaking at the second national conference on "Cyber Crime Investigation & Digital Forensics" organised by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Stating that the legal structure should be overhauled in a big way, he said: "I don't think any incremental change will help, the change has to be substantial, significant, fundamental and structural."
He said that was the area where there was a conflict between the two demands of the right to freedom of expression and right to privacy; and regulation, control, and ways to prevent fraudulent activities committed in the garb of right to privacy and right to freedom of expression. "That is the balance society has to strike," said the Minister.
Mr. Vaishnaw said that fortunately, the post-COVID world had changed so much fundamentally that the balance was now coming in the thought process of societies. In South Korea, Australia, every State of the U.S., and the European Union, a large number of legal and societal interventions were today happening in a bid to bring about a balance between the right to privacy and the need for regulation.
"We in India are also trying to create that societal consensus, it is happening. Recently, in Parliament, a multiple number of times, the Opposition, which used to be very vocal about the government trying to 'intrude" in people's lives...that used to be their basic accusation, is today asking that we need more regulation, more control, we need a legal structure in which people's privacy, as well as their right to live in a peaceful manner, is protected," he said.
The Minister said a consensus on the issue was emerging and that would propel the country towards a new legal structure, which had to be dynamic, in tune with the times, which addressed the aspirations of the coming generations, kept people safe, social media accountable, and the fraudsters away. All those things were part of the big regulatory structure which needed to be overhauled.