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India's Top Court Rules Privacy a Fundamental Right in Blow To Government
India's top court unanimously ruled on Thursday that individual privacy is a fundamental right, a verdict that will impact everything from the way companies handle personal data to the roll-out of the world's largest biometric ID card program. From a report: A nine-member bench of India's Supreme Court announced the ruling in a big setback for the Narendra Modi-led government, which argued that privacy was not a fundamental right protected by the constitution. The ruling comes against the backdrop of a large multi-party case against the mandatory use of national identity cards, known as Aadhaar, as an infringement of privacy. There have also been concerns over breaches of data. Critics say the ID cards link enough data to create a comprehensive profile of a person's spending habits, their friends and acquaintances, the property they own and a trove of other information. "This is a blow to the government, because the government had argued that people do not have a right to privacy," said Prashant Bhushan, a senior lawyer involved in the case.
How about the right not to be raped on a bus. How does the court feel about that?
Privacy is a basic right, we don't need TSA/leftist style privacy violations to stay safe.
TSA was created by Dubya. How is that leftist?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
"There have also been concerns over breaches of data. Critics say the ID cards link enough data to create a comprehensive profile of a person's spending habits, their friends and acquaintances, the property they own and a trove of other information"
Well these can also be obtained by a breach of a front-door, should we then forbid front-doors as well?
Criminals commit crimes, you can't stay in the past out of fear, just put them in jail when it happens.
According to "progressives", there's no such thing as a "fundamental" right.
Nope. You don't have a right to free speech. "Progressives" say that's only given to you by the government.
TSA was created by Dubya. How is that leftist?
How is "No Child Left Behind" central-government takeover of local school systems not leftist?
How is statist ubiquitous, pervasive surveillance of a nation's populace not leftist?
Oh, I see you've fallen for the propaganda that Dubya was a right-wing demon.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
India ratified this. So what's the big deal, Modi?
Ezekiel 23:20
How is "No Child Left Behind" central-government takeover of local school systems not leftist?
Centralized education - yeah, somewhat leftist.
How is statist ubiquitous, pervasive surveillance of a nation's populace not leftist?
Not leftist. Draconian surveillance is typical of any dictatorship; left-wing or right-wing. Eastern Germany had this with their leftist government. But so did Hitler's right-leaning government.
TSA was created by Dubya. How is that leftist?
Pretty sure he meant "globalist" and was too dim to realize it. Obama, Clinton, Bush, etc are on the same side: the side of globalism.
Nice of the Indian Supreme Court to rule in such a correct manner, and good luck to the people in India in taking their privacy back. Now if the US Supreme Court would just do so we can be rid of a whole lot of problems here.
A court in a 3rd world country, full of people that worship cows, is able to make better decisions than the US. Really sad...
Is this the first time a large, democratic government has expressly considered meta-data in a ruling?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I ain't no lawyer, but I bet that word "arbitrary" leaves a lot of wiggle room.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Like the US, India's legal system is based upon English common law. In my little fantasy World here, I'm imagining some American lawyer using the Indian's argument here in the US and prevailing.
Then again, I hope not because that would mean a very very painful experience for me as those monkeys fly out of my ass.
And the lowest common denominator has made himself know. I'm sure you're bitter that someone can be more intelligent than you despite not having mummy and daddy pay for their education, you shouldn't beat yourself up for being born stupid but being xenophobic is not acceptable and you can do something about that.
I think that right is long gone and will never be back.
Nathan
Try a two-dimensional political compass if you want to see something that resembles reality more closely. "Right" and "Left" fail when you look at the fact that Stalin and Hitler were on the opposite ends of the economy spectrum (State-planned economy vs. Fascist corporatism) but resided on the same end on the liberal vs. authoritarian spectrum.
In other words, try something like this if you really want to place people accurately. You might discover that a one dimensional "left" vs "right" scheme isn't able to actually display political reality accurately.
Unless of course this isn't your goal.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So that the transition to the US upon your migration will be painless^X^X^X less painful from such tyranny
Hate to break it to you, but I make more than 50K, and I only have a Bachelors. Perhaps you should have picked a better major?
...is that Dubya was a Republican.
Vote GOP, and you can get invasive social engineering crap just like you can if you vote Democrat.
Yeah, and that "attacks upon honour and reputation" clause sounds like a trap for suppressing the criticism of leaders and any other speech that they do not like. Let's not break out the party hats just yet.
To some of us, anyone who advocates for a larger, more powerful and intrusive government (basically, anyone whose idea of government is similar to Stalin's) is a "leftist." Repubs are far to the "left" because they think the economy should be centrally planned, people should surrender more rights to the government, everyone should be doing the same things (whatever they're TOLD) instead of freely going their own ways, etc. What we REALLY mean is "authoritarian" but the concepts get conflated and simplified as authoritarian==liberal, libertarian==conservative. Sure, it's technically wrong but it's good-performing shorthand.
The two axis system is useful for a more precise classification of the fringe, but for current politics of most of the first world countries one axis usually is enough because that fringe is usually a tiny (albeit vocal) minority. On the two axis system that one axis would run diagonal from the not quite bottom left (where on that picture democratic socialism and anarcho-communism share their border) to the not quite top right (shared border of capitalism and fundamentalism). For USA this axis wouldn't work, though, because the whole left side is missing, but on the right side there is a much larger variety of options. Hence you can take the two dimensional political compass, remove the whole left half and you are good.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Third World originally meant countries not allied with either the Soviet Union or the USA.
Later, it took on the meaning of a dirt poor country, typically in the tropics.
By *either* definition, India is the definition of THIRD WORLD.
I'm actually pretty surprised, and happily so! Now, if only some Western countries' courts would smarten up!
There goes Facebook's last great hope of rounding up another billion users. According to "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez, Facebook only has 2B users left on the planet to sign up before user growth slows to a crawl as the remaining users are in places too remote for the Internet. Whether logged in or browsing anonymously, Facebook combines its own data with third-party demographic data to identify each user. India's privacy ruling might make that difficult. Or maybe not.
No its not , it's fooled a lot of people into making a choice that is meaningless, and lose sight of the fact that there are other ideas out there about how government should work.
It's why about half the country voted for Trump , the other half for for Clinton , even though what we need right now isn't either of them. It's the fake forced choice. Right or left ? They are almost the same now on things that matter (government is still getting bigger , spending on things it shouldn't , violating people's rights in the name of fighting drugs or terrorism) and they violently disagree on things that don't matter (who exactly will be hurt if a gay couple gets married ?) and distracting everyone from real issues
The 1-dimensional spectrum sucks.
For the US, a zero dimensional display would suffice because bluntly, there isn't that much of a difference between the two wings of The Party. Only that they cater to different flavors of insanity.
But even for Europe that one dimensional diagonal doesn't work. If you take the socialist and social-democratic parties of various countries alone, you'll find them spread out in the upper left corner. Likewise, taking some of the more economic-liberal parties that border on anarcho-capitalism in some countries, you'll find them in the lower right corner.
Simply drawing a diagonal isn't going to cut it. You will of course find parties on that axis, but it isn't even the "mass appeal" parties anymore that you'll find close to that line. While you do find more and more parties that belong in that upper right quadrant, and oddly people actually vote for them (one would think that everyone has suddenly become the CEO of some multinational concern), the other three are pretty much evenly distributed among the rest.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Bill Clinton is a Democrat
"When the real Fourth Reich comes, you'll be the first to go."
It's kind of like "reasonable" in the 4th, open to interpretation. Shit, even things like the 1st are open to interpretation, you have free speech as long as we can't argue national security or as long as it doesn't hurt a child are a couple of exceptions to the rule that Congress can make no law infringing on speech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
haha you mean because they bribed their way through the indian IT papermill before getting here to be paid 1/5th what an american would make? Bribery is expected in that country and culture.
captcha: deceive
Eeee's a RINO...
Try a two-dimensional political compass if you want to see something that resembles reality more closely. "Right" and "Left" fail when you look at the fact that Stalin and Hitler were on the opposite ends of the economy spectrum (State-planned economy vs. Fascist corporatism) but resided on the same end on the liberal vs. authoritarian spectrum.
State-planned vs. Facist Corporatism aren't on opposite ends of the economy spectrum, they are varying degrees of the same side. State Corporatism is a step on the road to a State-planned economy. Free markets (to varying degrees) are what's on the the other side of both.
I assume your major was gender studies?
Did you go to some special training school to learn to become such a gigantic flaming asshole, or is it a natural talent of yours?
The only bad smell around here is YOU. Please go purify yourself. I recommend dousing yourself with an accelerant and applying FIRE.
A country of more than 1 BILLION people just had their highest court rule that people's privacy is a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT; SCOTUS, I AM LOOKING AT YOU RIGHT NOW.
Some people always mix up left and right, that is why they shouldn't drive.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
But that's just The Party. Outside of voting booths and campaigning, many Americans say things that place them elsewhere. We're just lazy about getting ourselves (or people like us) onto ballots, and whenever it does somehow happen, we stab ourselves in the back by voting against them in favor of The Party. Despite the hypocrisy and self-loathing, though, most people do pretty much rattle off opinions that are total heresy to The Party, and we constantly talk shit about The Party.
And it's shit-talking in various ways; I know a lot of left- and right- leaning anti-authoritarian people. Outside of the voting booth when you're talking to them, you would never guess that they have totally pledged their lifetime of votes to The Party and working against everything they say they believe in.
We Americans are self-destructive hypocrits, but I actually think we realize we're doing it, we're unhappy about it, and we betray ourselves for so-called "practical" reasons (e.g. voting for lesser-of-two-evils instead of voting for who we want). The 2016 presidential election is probably going to be one of the most famous examples. Not only did Everyone lose, but they were bitter about it even before election day. Most voters held their nose as they voted for The Party. They knew it was wrong, but did it anyway because they thought doing the right thing would be even worse.
(Hopefully, now we realize that we pretty much can't do worse. Sure, if you vote for the right people, you're going to lose. But now there can't be many people left who don't realize that if you vote for the worst people, you also lose. If we can reject that second type of losing, maybe the first type will no longer be guaranteed. But I'm getting off-topic here...)
The point is, from what Americans say (but not do) we are two-dimensional with considerable off-Party weight on the the libertarian-authoritarian axis. If we ever win the mental freedom to finally vote, which I'm sure many of you will explain is highly unlikely, America would be a force for The Party to reckon with. We hold our own keys and The Party has done a brilliant job of persuading us to keep our shackles on and tightened. They have hired the best, most incorruptible jailers ever: us.
Yet another nation puts the US to shame on these issues.
comprehensive profile of a person's spending habits, their friends and acquaintances, the property they own and a trove of other information.
So, India will not get social security and services with fraud prevention, reliable tax collection, lessened impact of organized crime, infrastructure.. Oh wait, did I cross a completely innocent Texas longhorn there? My infidel ass must get beaten up with a bat, and soon.
These cards were being created to eliminate corruption from people getting government subsidies through falsified means and also to get control of terrorists coming across the border. In addition, they were being tied to back accounts to make sure that tax cheats were brought to justice (this second part is already done in the US via SSNs).
However good the intent, it doesn't prevent them from being abused in the future, so the supreme court ruling makes sense.
However, the irony is that the intent of this Indian Government was good, but the court stymied them because of long term concerns. The intent in the US of corporations and the government is generally not good (monetize privacy and a predisposition to incarceration), and even through the US Supreme Court has "derived" an implicit right to privacy, the current court is one judge away from a majority being "constitutionalists" who won't recognize this right.
So what's the big deal, Modi?
The creation of religiously pure, Hindu India. All those cow-eaters, repent, begone or get beaten by the vigilant groups. That's what a recent France24 report told me. There was probably a good reason for the introduction of non-violence tactics by Gandhi at the time. He knew his people. Just like Orwell did his.
It is easy to blame a new system that can easily deliver a lot more than most of the systems in existence. Is it fool proof? No. Nothing is fool proof. Can it be made better? Sure. For any project, you need to execute operations pretty well to take care of day to day problems/inaccuracies. Most of the complaints have politically motivations, bias of India being third world country and can't do anything good in addition to ignorance of reality as motive. We may want it or not, every society is trying to gather more and more data about individuals in any way possible. US FCC is on path to get rid of net neutrality. Knowing who you are in every transaction opens up new usecases in every aspect of social interaction. Privacy, though desired, doesn't exist in any society. There is a false sense of privacy in some parts of the world. No wonder lot of people even wonder why privacy should be basic right. Even Swiss bank's have given up on that goal.
You're probably confused because you can only see "left" and "right" with no subtleties. Strong central governments have been used in both traditionally leftist governments as well as traditionally rightist governments. A libertarian leaning is neither left nor right, and an authoritarian leaning is also neither left nor right.
Example: the Pinochet government of Chile. Very right wing, as trade unions were banned and many state institutions were privatized, while also have a pervasive surveillance with secret police.
The issue I think is that when people self identify as left or right that they do not want to believe that people with similar views can be bad. So, any dictator must be from the opposite side of the political spectrum, any political stance they disagree with must also be from the opposite side, and so on. That's why there's a current ongoing revisionist history to start labeling fascist governments as being socialist despite clear evidence to the contrary.
Of there are only two political sides, then we're much better off even then in throwing out the idea of one being good and the other must then be evil. Instead try to see it as two different views on how to improve life's situations and that cooperation is much more effective than demonization in getting good things accomplished.
Well India does not have legal lobbying. Some thing has to fill that void!!
Every country is also unique in its political history, and those histories greatly affect modern views. For example, in the US politics has evolved through the original divides of the north and the south. Primarily the key issue was slavery but also as the north become more industrialized there were fundamental differences between industrial vs agrarian values. The slave issue creted idea of states' rights and that concept is still a politial hot button even today. Another key factor in the US were struggles over international trade issues, whereas in Europe such ideas were less vital because borders were very fluid and trade with other regions as vital to survival. US had gold versus silver fights, arising because of regional issues, and today the arguments about having a gold standard are driven more by constitutional issues rather than economic ones, thus being a uniquely American struggle.
You write like that, and complain about English fluency. Wow...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Probably wrote a book on inequality while the getting is good. Hope it makes it to The View.
Ha! You say that from a country where the state imprisons people for expressing certain opinions. Most governments in the world run from the left to the right and stay almost completely confined to the top half.
You just happen to like your local flavor of authoritarianism, just like the people in the top right like their flavor of authoritarianism.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Ugh.
This is why "privacy" ought NOT be understood as "secrecy", but as a "privacy need" for every individual.
The general idea of "Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." should NOT replace specific qualifiers (handling/storing/recording/trading/movement of "personal data"), when the general idea of "Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." is not about privacy needs as such, but instead, sounds like retribution or reparation, which would be counter to my idea of needs-as-rights. Basically it should imo be like about you being able to claim a particular need in an ideal sense (something everybody would understand, or more importantly, understand BEFOREHAND), or, there is an understanding that everybody CAN claim a need (also to be understood BEFOREHAND).
Btw, I read something recently on twitter about India supposedly having lost data records on their citizens to the one and only CIA (USA), and as I think of how norway has said to previously have outsourced critical work on patient data software/systems to some Indian business, with what I like to think of as the theater of public outrage in the public sector of things (or ofc maybe it is all legit), I can't help but wonder if maybe (given that there might be a connection between CIA ops and India), that maybe the filphering of patient data from norway was arranged by local pro US politicians, though admittedly, there is no way for me to know this to even be the case. Just saying, it wouldn't surprise me the least. I swear, some years ago, I recall reading news about how the information about all the numbers equivalent to social security numbers for people in norway, had at one time been misplaced and lost, and presumably that data ended up in the hands of someone.
The slave issue created [the] idea of states' rights
Not at all true: the issue of states' rights existed independently of slavery. Many people from Northern States - which didn't have slave economies - were strong supporters of state's rights. That goes way back - for example, some colonies were populated by people that fled the religious oppression in other colonies, and had no desire to see their freedom taken away - and to prevent that they wanted to limit the influence of the other states via the shared national government. In addition to religious issues, there were other sources of long-standing hostility as well (such as those that existed between New York State and Vermont - which greatly complicated selecting the command structure to oppose the northern invasion, leading to a drunken incompetent having the "official" command at the Battle of Saratoga - which was won in spite of his "leadership", not because of it).
Also, many people feared that the government far away in England would simply be replaced by another far away government in the Colonies that would end up being just as bad - and state's rights were seen as a buffer against this. There was also a big concern that the smaller states would be dominated by the larger ones - here, too, states' rights became a buffer.
Similar regional differences had a long history in England - a history that educated members of the colonies were familiar with. It's not just a question of Scotland and Ireland, either, but regional differences on a smaller scale - or sectarian differences - played a significant political role. All this led to a desire for people from a particular region to control their own destiny as much as possible - hence the strong push for states' rights.
None of this should be taken as condoning slavery. As the speech by Morris of NY at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 makes clear - everybody with a functional brain knew that slavery needed to be ended from the perspective of logic and reason, but the corruption was too deeply entrenched.
says someone whose country murders its citizens and has more people imprisoned than any other country in the world. i most certainly prefer mine.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Your country is responsible for some of the most horrible atrocities in recent history (genocide, human medical experimentation, literally Hitler ...), started two world wars, and has been continuously at war for how many centuries before the current one??
You guys have managed to not be bloodthirsty warmongers for only a small number of decades so far. You're getting ahead of yourself with your moral superiority there, fella!
don't worry, soon Trump-genics will fix all inbreeding, in pc-times thats black & white alike unlike the old new york and california version (which was like copyrightally infringed (in my baed ingelsh) by the nazis LATER) i say YAY for india, allen daarheen
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?