HYDERABAD:With debate raging over multinational companies storing data generated by Indians in servers located outside the country, and Supreme Court sending notices to Facebook and WhatsApp last year over lack of data localisation, an executive from Facebook speaking at a session on data digital trade and cross-border data flow during the World Congress on Information Technology - 2018 and NASSCOM ILF, said that data localisation does not mean that law-enforcement agencies would have free access to data.
At the session, Bhairav Acharya, associated with Public Policy, Facebook, said the official position of the social media giant is that the government can have access to data available with it but only “for legitimate reasons”. The session was moderated by Rama Vedashree, CEO of Data Security Council of India.
The discussion also saw the senior corporate executives expressing their opinion on cross-border flow of data, which has also become part of the data piracy debate and is part of the White Paper on Data protection Framework by the committee under Chairmanship of former SC Justice BN Srikrishna. The committee is yet to submit its final report to the government.
While all the corporate executives stressed on the need of data privacy of individuals, they raised various points regarding clarity and pricing as part of cross-border data flow regulations, as the discussion got centered around EU General Data Protection Regulation that will come into enforcement from May.
Andrew Cooke, Regional Director - Legal affairs - APAC and Japan, Microsoft, said one of the greatest inhibitors of innovation is lack of clarity on cross-border data flow. Rahul Jain, who is with Public Policy, Google, supporting cross-border data flow, said it enables universal access to services for public good. However, Arvind Gupta, CEO, My Gov, pointed out that as internet is getting democratised, data is getting into fewer and fewer hands and it raises the question as to who owns the data.