Data privacy

IT is high time India had a proper data privacy law in place (”Spycraft becoming statecraft”, September 23). Enormous amounts of personal data are generated as more than half of the country's 1.4 billion people get online and start using the Web. The state has a duty to protect people from becoming data commodities of surveillance capitalism. Data-driven governance also runs the risk of being misused in the absence of a robust, holistic privacy law. Digital data rights are as important as human rights.

P. UNNIKRISHNAN THRISSUR, KERALA