Apropos your front-page story “Expats, tourists may also get right to privacy” (June 22), the issues are so important that the Bill will need a wider and deeper debate when it is presented in Parliament. There is need for caution in making concessions in cases such as granting powers to insurance companies to access someone’s health records when covering his life and medical risks or employers’ right to scrutinise employees’ bank accounts when questions of the latters’ integrity are raised. Also, we may be opening a Pandora’s Box if we allow more government agencies to tap telephone lines. If the office of India’s finance minister is reportedly bugged, you can imagine the plight of ordinary mortals.
Your report also quotes a corporate chief as taking judicial recourse to protect his privacy. The right to privacy for individuals is quite different from the claim of companies to privacy even if in legal fiction, companies are also regarded as “persons”. Companies already function in an opaque way and if they are also to be given their right of privacy there is danger of even legitimate information being denied to the public.
In March this year, the US Supreme Court decided on the issue of “personal privacy” in the case Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission. The lower court’s decision to extend the right of “personal privacy” to corporations was reversed 8-0. The full text of this landmark judgment should be studied by our government, parliamentarians, jurists and the media in the context of the current happenings in the political and corporate worlds.
S Subramanyan, Navi Mumbai
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