Non-Personal Data Policy: Citizens cite risks of targeting, surveillance, data misuse

The citizen feedback on the Non-Personal Data draft policy is not positive as people say there is very little to gain and the risk is of increased targeting, surveillance and data misuse.

According to Local Circles, Non-Personal Data draft policy has gotten the dialogue started amongst citizens and businesses, it needs to be revisited considering the findings of a survey. “From a citizen standpoint, there is very little to gain and the risk is of increased targeting, surveillance and data misuse,” it said.

The nine-member committee set up by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, released a draft non-personal data policy in mid-July giving the public two months to provide feedback. Per the policy, any data which does not contain any personally identifiable information of an individual is termed as non-personal data.

For example, while order details collected by an e-commerce platform will have the name, age, address and other contact information of an individual, it will be considered non-personal data if specific identifiers like name, address and contact information are removed.

NPD also classified non-personal data into three main categories – public non-personal data, community non-personal data and private non-personal data. Although many experts say that this policy is a forward looking step and will create a culture of data sharing of non-personal data which will bring overall benefits to the country, MSME and startups as well as citizens do not seem to be in favour of the policy in its current form.

Read More: https://www.bhaskarlive.in/non-personal-data-policy-citizens-cite-risks-of-targeting-surveillance-data-misuse/