The Free Software Movement of India (FSMI) has condemned the Centre’s notification enabling government agencies to monitor and decrypt information in computers, terming it a violation of Supreme Court orders.
In a statement released to the media, FSMI general secretary Y. Kiran Chandra claimed the notification appeared to increase the powers of authorities and said, “The notification is utterly against the spirit of recent Supreme Court judgments on privacy, Aadhaar and the Srikrishna Committee Report on Data Protection. It turns the clock back on the privacy framework and the rights of Indian citizens.”
Drawing parallels with the USA’s National Security Agency, he said the notification should be seen in a ‘global context’. “The Supreme Court has declared, in the Right to Privacy verdict, that any intrusion on privacy must meet the four-fold test of legality, need, proportionality and process. The recent Srikrishna Committee Report states that the processing of personal data can be done for only ‘clear, specific and lawful’ purposes,” he said.
