HYDERABAD: As the text of the Personal Data Protection Bill is finally made available to the public, city-based cyber activists are raising an alarm over certain sections of the Bill. If cyber securitry experts are to be believed, large Multinational Corporations (MNCs) have been negotiating with the government to get a stay on the implementation of the Bill within their company for a time period, if it gets to be a law.
Speaking to Express, Sai Krishna, chairman of the Global Cyber Security Forum, said that industries in india were pushing the government to get themselves exempted from the law for two years if the Bill gets passed. “This pressure is mostly being levied by Multinational Corporations, who, when the Bill gets implemented, will have to invest a lot in setting up the necessary infrastructure, including setting up data localisation infrastructure and so on,” Krishna added.
Independent security researcher Srinivas Kodali said, “Under the proposed Personal Data Protection Bill, the government can grant exemptions to certain companies to collect any personal data, which is a bad idea.”But apart from the exemptions that will be provided to certain companies, the Bill also leaves government agencies out of its ambit.“As an individual, I cannot complain against the government if I have any reservations for the data collected.
That is because the government itself is exempted from the bill,” said Sai Krishna. Internet browsing company Mozilla Firefox also chimed in on the debate and said that the biggest concern in the draft was the Data Protection Bill’s expansion of the broad exceptions for government use of data and data localization requirements.