NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court 's observation that individuals are not hermits and their lives shape and are shaped by the social environment will be a important basis of the data-protection law and regulations the Centre will soon roll out.The interplay between individual and society and impact of these relationships on privacy will be evaluated as a guiding principle by the committee set up to frame a law on data security, official sources said. In designing programmes and policy interventions, the government will keep in mind the SC 's direction that proportionality is as important as legality and need so that the means match the results sought and overkill is avoided.The government has noted that the SC, in an act of "judicial statesmanship", had left the task of devising a comprehensive data protection law to the executive and legislature and efforts would be made to draw up norms at the earliest.Sources said the government had made a crucial change in approach when the SC was considering whether privacy could be a fundamental right or not when it abandoned its earlier stance that the issue related to common law alone. The effort of the committee will be to draft a "privacy-compliant" law.Current Aadhaar-linked schemes and other initiatives like those relating to action against black money are seen to fall within the ambit of legitimate aims set out by the apex court.The SC has since 2015 allowed Aadhaar linkages in various schemes Justice S K Kaul in his order wrote that national security was an obvious exception and Justice A M Sapre said a state could impose reasonable curbs due to social, moral or compelling public.The government's read of the lead order and others has led to the assessment that state action will have to pass the tests set out by the court which has also simultaneously agreed that "allocation of resources for human development is coupled with a legitimate concern that the utilisation of resources shouldn't be siphoned away for extraneous purposes". As "data mining" for the object of ensuring that resources reach legitimate users is held as a valid ground for collection, the government will move ahead with its financial inclusion schemes.

Source: Times of India August 25, 2017 22:52 UTC