Amid debates over how companies store and use customer data, Minister of Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad has asked Amazon India to set up storage servers in India ‘on priority’ to store data of its users within the country.
The issue came up at a recent meeting between the Minister and Amit Agarwal, who heads Amazon’s India operations. “India offers a big market to such firms. I conveyed to them that they are welcome to do business here. But every e-commerce transaction generates data and we are concerned about its safety and security as well as the element of users’ consent, particularly on trans-border migration of data,” the Minister said at a select media interaction.
‘Do this on priority’
“Therefore, I told them that they must have their server here. And, this initiative must be taken on priority basis.” Amazon India did not respond to queries.
Greater clarity, as to what type of data will have to mandatorily be stored in India, will emerge once the law on data protection is finalised.
The minister explained, “Any constructive use of data is welcome. I am very keen that India becomes a centre of data analytics… What concerns me is unbridled migration of data without the consent of Indians.”
He added that data analytics would soon become a big segment of growth, especially given the large amounts of data generated by Indians. In the draft personal data protection bill 2018 released last month, the Justice B.N. Srikrishna-headed panel has also suggested that critical personal data of Indian citizens be processed in data centres located in the country.
It has recommended that other personal data may be transferred outside the territory of India, however, with certain riders such as storing a copy of the data in India.
The proposal has been opposed by many commentators, terming it “bad for business” and calling it a “proxy for enabling surveillance”, while others have supported it for the reasons of law enforcement, preventing foreign surveillance, creating local jobs and ensuring jurisdiction of Indian authorities.
