The Networks of Judicial Concepts: Surveillance, Privacy, and Data

• In Event: Precision and Uncertainty in a World of Data - I

Abstract

The Networks of judicial Concepts: Surveillance, Privacy, and Data
Veena Das
A crucial Supreme Court Judgment in 2017 in India on the judicial status of the right to privacy as a fundamental right offers a fascinating lens with which to view how notions of privacy have become intertwined with the Government’s ability to amass and digitalize information on the population in the era of big data. In the case of Justice K S Puttaswamy (Retd.), and Anr. versus Union of India and Ors which was heard by a nine member bench , the majority ruled that the right to privacy was a fundamental constitutional right which has led to a variety of challenges at local levels to several bureaucratic practices such as the demand to show government issued identity cards for accessing services in banks, hospitals, and schools. However, while five members of the bench ruled in favor of treating the right to privacy as a fundamental right there were considerable differences in the manner in which each of the five judges as well as the four dissenting judges understood what was the judicial meaning of privacy. This paper will ask how the concept of privacy has evolved in the judicial reasoning in India in relation to both state and non-state actors. Is there a continuous evolution of this concept in the light of big data or might one consider the judges to have introduced a rupture in the concept of privacy which might have serious consequences for ongoing struggle offer citizenship in the frontier regions such as Kashmir and Assam. The paper contributes to an understanding of new issues that data technology poses for law and politics.

Author

• Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University