‘Privacy fundamental right’

Ruling blow to biometric programme

NEW DELHI, Aug 24, (Agencies): India’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that citizens have a constitutional right to privacy, a landmark decision that could jeopardise a government programme holding biometric data on over a billion people.

Privacy is not explicitly mentioned in the Indian constitution and the government has argued that the country’s 1.25 billion people have no absolute right to it.

But the top court said the right to privacy was enshrined in the constitution, a ruling which civil liberties campaigners hailed as a milestone.

“The right of privacy is a fundamental right,” the nine judges deciding the case said in a unanimous ruling.

“It is a right which protects the inner sphere of the individual from interference from both State and nonState actors and allows the individuals to make autonomous life choices.”

Rule

The Supreme Court had set up a special bench to rule on the issue after a legal challenge to the government’s Aadhaar biometric programme, which has recorded the fingerprints and iris scans of more than one billion Indians.

Prashant Bhushan, one of the lawyers working on the Aadhaar challenge, said the ruling was a blow to the right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“It is a big jolt for the government because they argued that privacy is not a fundamental right,” he told reporters outside the court.

Aadhaar was set up as a voluntary scheme to streamline benefit payments to millions of poor people and reduce fraud.

But in recent years it has become compulsory for a growing number of services, including opening a bank account and paying taxes.

Opponents say that its use for what are effectively essential services means their right to privacy is increasingly being violated.

Technology law expert Mishi Choudhary called the ruling a “milestone” in the global history of privacy rights.

“If I can stop smiling, then I’ll be able to comment. The world’s largest democracy has spoken,” said Choudhary, legal director at the Software Freedom Law Center in New York.

“People who said that this (Aadhaar) is the creation of a surveillance state, they are not engaging in hyperbole.

“I personally think the mission creep of Aadhaar is very worrying. It started with one particular thing, to give an ID card to people below the poverty line, and slowly it becomes this hydra for everything ... now I have a digital leash around my neck.”

The government has rejected suggestions that the programme, set up in 2009, poses a threat to civil liberties, despite personal data being leaked in security breaches.

In May Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi dismissed the idea that Indians could refuse to provide their iris scans or fingerprints to the government, telling a court “the concept of absolute right over one’s body was a myth”.

Legal experts had said the case would be a test of Indian democracy, with potentially far-reaching consequences if individuals were allowed to challenge laws on the basis of individual rights.

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