HYDERABAD: Telangana government’s mobile phone applications, such as Hawk Eye, TS-wallet, and others do not have any clearly defined privacy policy, publicly available. With the SC ruling Right to Privacy a fundamental right, the lack of a well-defined privacy policy could attract legal trouble for firms developing and operating the state government applications in the future, say experts related to the field.
All government websites and applications adhere to the Guidelines for Indian Government Website (GIGW) rule book for privacy related compliance. “The public does not have access to the Terms and Conditions that we have with those companies. There are strict norms that govern the usage and access to that data,” said Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary, IT department. “There are strict protocols in place to secure public privacy. We are following GIGW a national protocol,” he added. However, not all state government applications follow GIGW. Take for instance Telangana police’s Hawk Eye app, privacy policy page opens to the webpage of the app developer. The privacy policy on the page deals with the user information collected by a website, but not by the app. They are in violation of the national guidelines. The case is similar for almost all other state government funded apps.
“No private company is taking user information and making money. Why would we allow the private company to have access to our data?” he said.“It all depends on the client asking the app developer if the app protects user privacy. If the client or the government is not asking the app developer about how user data will be used then he is not legally obliged to actually do anything. With the SC verdict, both parties will be liable to disclose and make privacy an aspect of such contracts,” he added.