 So prompt that we need to be updated. Maybe by the time we say something, by the time we are arguing in the court, by the time the judges are hearing the arguments, some new law has developed. Gone are the days when we used to wait for journals to come, they used to come at monthly intervals and the judgments which were reported were two, three, four months old. Today the judgment has just been passed or what is going on in the court is reported. Maybe you can see it on the live law, bar and bench and many other apps. This is very good, but good things do come with their backs of the law. They bring lot of changes, sometimes changes give us excellent results, but there is always, if there is silver lining behind a dark cloud, there is also some darkness behind a silver cloud. The et alayandera is no exception. Friends, I am sure that most of you have watched the famous movie Three Idiots and maybe not once, but twice or thrice. Or you must have watched certain very, very good scenes on YouTube or any other medium again and again and one of the celebrated piece of slice of the movie is when Chatur addresses the audience on the annual day in the speech which he has just crammed, unmindful of the fact that the computer on which he was working was not in his private space but in a public space and somebody has made certain changes which have messed up everything. So the word chamatkar has been replaced with baladkar and when we see the movie, we keep on laughing on seeing this. But if we look at the grim realities, it is no laughing matter because it is an example of how the privacy has been breached. Here, the person, he was moved from the place where he was working on some pretext and by the time he had gone, he was not there. Certain changes have been made and he did not understood the meanings because he said that I would cram and he did cram without understanding the meaning and that created all the scene which was there. Friends, these are not the days when the enemy is visible. These are not the days when wars were fought in the battlegrounds where you could decipher from the uniform of a soldier that it belongs to the other side, the enemy. Of course, deception was very much part of the war during those times. If anybody has read the celebrated book by a Chinese author, the art of war, you would see that the running line is deception. With deception, one can win the war. We have seen World War I, World War II, how by throwing the information that enemy would be attacking from a particular side. The other side was made to send its forces to that particular side and it was caught unaware on the other borders thinking that enemy would not attack from those borders. Friends, if you look at your houses, if you look at your habits, they have changed a lot over the years and during the last three decades the change has been very fast. Thanks to the technology which has grown exponentially, even it is very difficult for us to keep track with the technology. Today you bring the best possible mobile, the latest version and you bring it home but your happiness is short lived. After some time, maybe a day or two or three you would learn that some other company has launched a new mobile with many features which your mobile is missing. So all your joy has converted into some kind of grief or sorrow. Though you have spent a handsome sum of money. These were not the things of good old times. Those who belong to old school like me must be remembering the days when if we have to purchase a TV there were not many choices. And even with those choices it was the same TV. You can go for western, you can go for texla, you can go for televista, you can go for ectv or any other brand that was in market. But at the end of the day it was the same TV with different brand mark. Four switches to control everything. Now you don't know how many features your TV has and tomorrow the things may be different. At that time our houses were open. Neighbours, friends could have easy access to our homes. There is a place known as Shanishinapur where they say that there are no doors to the houses and yet no theft takes place. They attribute that to the power of Lord Shani. Not going into that debate why the thefts do not take place. To me it seems that people are not so affluent that you can find much worth stealing. Be that as it may the fact of the matter is if you look at our houses things have changed a lot. Now the houses are not very open. There is not much open space in your house. Even people have converted their open spaces, galleries etc into closed spaces because space has become very costly and we feel that we are very secure in the four walls of our house. And that is the biggest myth. The more walls we create the more gates we create the more security gadgets we put into our houses. The more insecure we are becoming and for that thanks to technology. Friends you must be remembering the days either from your own memory or from the movies, old movies which you have watched. During the good old times even if you go if any boy goes for watching a movie it was a big characterization. When TVs came to our house it was controlled by government so everything was screened before it was shown to us. But when the technology developed computers came into our house then with the start of World Wide Web. World Wide Web means you are connected. Though you are in your home but you are connected with the entire world. Because your computer is connected with somebody else's computer and somebody else's computer is connected with your computer so on and so forth. So within your house you are not alone you are connected and how these connections are established. These are established by the language which the computers understand and they only understand the language of electrical impulses which we commonly say as 0 and 1. So computer does not know any alphabet computer does not know any number system. It knows only on and off if the electrical impulse is there or the electrical impulse is not there. 0 or 1 we may call it. And by that process lot and lot of information is transmitted between various computers which are connected through World Wide Web. And this World Wide Web is the biggest horror which we are witnessing. See as long as the going is good people are honest they don't misuse the technology technology is a very good friend. But the movement the technology comes in the hand of a predator a stalker or anybody who intends to misuse it it becomes the biggest enemy and we are caught unaware. Everybody wishes to be hero in the movie many aspire many go to Mumbai the film city to try their luck many succeed many fail but the dreams never die. We also want to see ourselves on the screen and but now sometimes people see that to their horror. That they receive some call from some unknown person. Call may be converted into a video call. Your video is recorded and tomorrow you see that the receiver is in some video upon video the protagonist in that video and that sends the shiva down the spine and then one is asked to pay for the deletion of that video. Fact of the electronic record is that it never gets deleted. It leaves it traces. Deletion is a very very long and tedious process you have to overwrite everything. Whatever sometimes you delete is only the index file that is deleted but the real content is never deleted. The trace is so big, so lasting, so permanent in this non-permanent world. Which is a very good thing. Records can be preserved for long and long and long times but which has its own bag of problems. So if you want that something should phase out from the memory of people it would not. Whatever has been created would stay there. But the horror does not just stop here. The horror is carried forward. There was a very famous mathematician who said of British origin he said that nowadays data is the new oil. We now understand the value of oil. How certain countries which could not feed themselves once upon a time when they discovered oil their economies, their finances, their riches have changed and changed to achieve the heights which we cannot even dream of Arab countries, Dubai these are some of the examples to be cited. So oil was just perhaps much more worth than gold. Today the oil is being replaced with data. You must have seen at various exhibitions data being sold in CDs or pen drive or online like the manufacturers which you are looking for the places which you are looking for the sellers which you are looking for those are available and when you open it you find a flood of information because we are living in the information age where information is power information is money and we all know that data is being sold and sometimes data is necessary also it's not that data is part of the culprit most of the time data is our very good friend when we present a case before the court it depends on the kind of research we have carried with the help of the application or using which is able to churn out the latest judgments on a particular subject or a particular aspect which is relevant to us. So I know the days when I started my practice we used to spend hours and hours in library searching for cases and maybe to get one good case you have to open 20, 30, 50 books and maybe after searching 20, 30, 50 books you may not be able to get the kind of the judgment which you are looking for. So it was really burning the midnight oil but now we see paperless offices with the press of a small button you can have access to thousand and thousand of cases which are relevant to you and then you keep on defining your search and finding the cases which are really relevant to your case. So search has become very easy the information at your control is much more than you could have got that in the good old times when you had to depend upon the books and libraries and we know that library used to close after certain time whether it was in port or whether it was in chambers or whether it was the public library but now those libraries are no longer they are just breathing their last things have changed and now the enemy which was outside has come inside us say if you have gone to Flipkart or Amazon and search for certain things after some time you start getting suggestions of the products which you have searched for and if you have turned your location on in your mobile when you go to places you will start getting the rather I say that you would be trolled to tell you the things the kind of eateries which are around the kind of shops which sells the goods for which you have searched for they are guiding you that these are the and this is unsolicited you have not asked for it you just search for something and they are trolling you so what was your private space you want yourself to be left alone you want yourself to be led to yourself but these things are approaching you they are haunting you they are coming in your way and now we have Alexa we have many things today if you talk about something maybe your mobile or your electronic devices would keep on showing you those articles about which you have talked about you are sitting together with your family and you are discussing a particular ice cream or ice cream as such and you are shown different messages they are telling you that this particular ice cream is available at this door near you all those kind of things and you feel that this is too much maybe tomorrow if you dream something your mobile or your Alexa device or your computer may start showing the things about which you have had dreams this is too much and the fact of the matter is that you are not sure of the efficacy of the institution or the person who is handling this data that is where all the problem lies data is being created it is being stored is one side of the problem but who is managing your data who is having access to it who is controlling it and how he can profile you with the help of the data which has been collected and maybe showing you the side of yourself which you do not know is a very scary picture as long as it is just like it is lying locked no problem but when it comes out it creates a host of problems your private life becomes public the side which you do not want to see anybody perhaps your side which you are not even personally aware of to that extent that becomes visible to public at large and that too maybe in an undefined way but maybe in some way in which it has been given a particular kind of color particular kind of thing particular kind of character which kills your personality which harms your personality which attacks your image which slanders your character and the enemies are known the problem with today's technology is that at the most you may be able to reach the machine but you may not be able to reach the person and we know the fate of the defamation suits easier said than done you have to bring the witnesses who would testify to the court that your reputation in the estimation has fallen to bring a witness on your own who would testify that they don't give you the reputation which they used to give you earlier and how many people can afford to go to the courts to bring about these suits and the damage is done and damage is being continually done I remember one story there was a person who uttered certain words to defame a person so the matter went to court and the person was found to be guilty he said that I have apologized and therefore I should be just let off maybe with a warning or something of this sort court said okay what you do what you have uttered to defame the other party on a piece of paper so he complied the court said that now what you do you tear this paper into smaller shreds shreds of paper whatever smallest you can do so he complied with that also now court said now you go to some place and blow them away he complied with it and came back to the court now court said that now you go to that place again and bring those shreds of paper to court he could not find even one tenth of those papers so once the damage is done it is very difficult to contain this damage the previously in the good old times when our houses were open for inspection by neighbors friends relatives the privacy was not a big issue because we had only the enemies which were known if somebody has intruded into my privacy it could be my neighbor, my friend, my relative or maybe one of my family members so the task was not difficult and just because of the fear that a person who has intruded into somebody's privacy could be exposed people used to refrain from intrusion into the privacy but now we have invited the enemies within our home thanks to world wide web people are connected to us people unknown to us we are members of many social sites whatsapp, facebook, twitter, instagram we post our private photographs the friends on facebook may not be the real person it may be just a name it may be just an identity created for the purpose of being your friend on the facebook may not have a real entity may not have a real existence many cases have come boys chasing girl but the girl turns out to be boy or vice versa person is talking to somebody who is none other than his or her own spouse somebody is trolling somebody is talking and the horror is very big and as long as the going is good its alright but when the things go out of hand when the data is breached when the person whom you are trusting and you have shared your intimate photographs your videos your personal information so enemies there to bounce upon it is in this context that writer privacy which started with a very humble beginning in many cases was considered to be in Putta Swami's judgment by the constitutional bench as to be the integral right to the integral part of the right to life it even set aside the judgment where the right was not so recognized in MP Sharma's case and set back the clock to the good old days that it was a right to life and of course as the days are passing by the right to life right to privacy is becoming an integral part of our life because technology has so much intruded into our lives that now we are the final line and this is becoming very clear that yes this was my private space I have kept it guarded with doors, logs, walls, windows but with the electronic revolution I have brought in the enemies I have brought the spies who can sneak into and crouch upon my private space and are always threatening to make it public not only this we share our data with many we go to a doctor doctor prescribes certain diagnostic tests we go to a laboratory give our samples maybe it is blood maybe it is some other excretion from the body we go to certain places they test our identity maybe with an eye scan maybe with some other thing which is particular to me maybe with your fingerprints any feature which is unique to us and we leave those traces there so our medical records they are maintained online doctors give consultation online doctors send prescription online we purchase medicines online from pizza to houses we purchase online and these all are creating a very big thing called data and history very small period of history though history is written over centuries but here the history has been written indicates that lot of data breaches have taken place and not only in our country where the technology development is not to the extent to which it has developed in other countries though we are also second to none but in those very very developed countries data breaches have taken place be it the case of in 2012 LinkedIn data breach in which 30 million users data was compromised and it was accessible to a Russian hacker there was lot of unrest Facebook scandal where more than 500 million people's data was breached in 2018 MySpace in 2013 compromised the data of 160 million people and so on and so forth though as the technology is growing we always know that the culprit the person who are on the wrong side of law they are technologically much more advanced they are able to hack somebody's identity somebody's email somebody's Facebook and do some mischief because it's very difficult to protect but it is very easy to breach you find some small space and you start hitting on it that's why we have ethical hackers also who do the same things as the but for ethical purposes to check whether the system is hacking proof or not so they try all the tools that are available to them to check if the system is suspect to breach or not but again it's easier said than done because for ethical people to work is much more difficult than for people with no ethics they can attack, they can hit they can keep on trying and they may find some way out we know the if we hear the story of the war of Troy in which they could not breach the castle but ultimately they left leaving a wooden horse in which many army men were concealed and that's why it is said that there is beware of the people bringing gifts because gifts may be sometimes something else in guys so the people of Troy celebrating that they could not let the anime in brought that Trojan horse inside and then what had happened is written in the history and that's why we have a virus by the name of Trojan horse also so as long as the anime is outside you are secure but when you bring the anime in it is like sleeping with the anime therefore in this regime when the courts have been so conscious to sentinel your right of privacy that we take cognizance of the changed times and we have a regime of data protection because when data is becoming the present age in which we are living the tangible properties losing its value and these are the intangible properties which are gaining their ground uber, ola, these are the examples of they don't have any taxes they don't have any offices they are just working on an app it's all intangible but they are working on the technology and perhaps the services we deliver is much more better than the services which were earlier existing Oyo rooms, the hall, the hotel chains they have brought under one channel, under one umbrella IPS during last 3-4 decades they have really become a property on which we have more of the disputes rather than dispute over who owns a particular house so the entire landscape of litigation has changed because now the whole world is a data driven economy nobody wants to conquer new lands everybody wants data, somebody can this perhaps the traditional way of fighting wars would become totally redundant the armies, the air force the navy may exist only namesake because the fight is for data with data they can control they can paralyze the entire system so they can sound the death knell of the enemy control of the data with artificial intelligence there is perhaps there would be no need to send your spies in physical way to other countries you can run with a person sitting at a remote place with the help of a computer he may be able to see many things which perhaps a spy in physical presence may not be able to see how a particular country moves on what things it is dependent where are the resources located where are the things being shifted how some computer program can be hacked or changed to do some damage those would be the things of they are the things of present and they may manifest themselves as things of future so in this context the data becomes very very relevant and when the data becomes relevant I am reminded of a phrase used in copyright law that what is worth stealing is worth protecting so when data can be put to use and can be subject to abuse so there need to be a regime need to be a well defined law where this data can be protected so that it is used and processed for right purposes but much more than that it is being controlled and protected from abuse and in this context on 11th of January 2019 a bill on data protection was proposed by the government it was tabled in the parliament and it was left for public debate lot of debate started people gave their views things poured in from many sources and in the course of time it was discovered there was a commission to look after the data protection law it also suggested draft changes there was a joint parliament committee which looked into this and this JPC made suggested more than 80 changes well more new recommendations you see when one law is proposed to come it is an answer to a problem which is confronting the society so at the government level at the higher level at the level of parliament you have to take everybody along to the demands of various stakeholders and these demands are competing demands so it is not easy to work in that area that is why when the laws are enacted they have their own guided process through which they have to pass experts are invited to comment on the various aspects of law public research is invited all stakeholders and it is presumed that anybody who is affected by it may be a person who is made comfortable by a particular law may not come and say something give a pat on the back yes you have enacted a very good law but everyone who is impacted in some small way and we are a democracy people participate in many ways we do not participate in the parliamentary process just by casting our franchise but we participate in many many other ways like when we give our comments when we send our response to the laws which are proposed to be enacted to govern us this is what participatory democracy means and I am happy that our country is on very strong footing on that so much was found to be affecting certain people their rights so many changes were proposed that after three years of churning out process it was put into motion in the month of 2019 in December 2019 on 11th of December but in the month of August 2022 that is a month back government the Indian government the central government decided to call it a day and to withdraw the bill stating that it would come out with a comprehensive legislation on that because the changes which were suggested the safeguards which were suggested the recommendations which were made the challenges which were put forth were so many that it was not possible to correct the script but to rewrite the script and we are at that stage now that today till date we don't have any data protection law many other countries have their well placed data protection law I don't say that data protection law is the panacea for all the ills laws however good they are they are still to be tested when they are put into real practice and that time still despite having very good data protection laws certain countries have faced certain instances where the laws were complied more in breach than in compliance than in honour but that is what what is the test which every law faces we can have a 60 by 65 certificate from anybody who is putting any evidence which is electronic but we cannot say that everybody would give a truthful 65 B certificate that is for our system to check but certainly it is high time that we have a well defined and comprehensive and we have full faith that when so much churning process has been done and the churning has been very good because so many amendments proposed so many recommendations made so many concerns flagged the it shows how vibrant our parliamentary system is how deep foundation the democracy has taken place but it is right time that we have the data protection law without much wastage of time so when the new bill is placed before us for public scrutiny I hope that our legal eagles and everybody the legal eagle beat a member of public who feels concerned beat the persons who are responsible for giving impetus to rule of law whether they are in the bar in bench in many other institution which deal with law that they give it a thoughtful move forward with their critical opinions because this critical opinion is the basic third of the society which keeps the democracy alive and we wish that it soon sees the light of the day and we have a regime which is all pervasive for data protection so that the small start-ups who may have to analyze the data may have to export the data are able to do that in anonymous way so that data gives the best possible results and privacy of no individual is affected the economy of country is not put on hold just because we go for a data protection regime which is too closed does not serve the purpose rather does the adverse of it so we are keeping our fingers crossed for the comprehensive bill awaiting for it and hope that it would protect our privacy and we all contribute to bring out the best possible legislation because we have experience of many other countries we have our own experiences of data pages which we can use that experience as our starting point and perhaps we have been able to get a very good constitution taking cues from various other constitution of the world it has stood the test of times and we I wish that we all contribute to enactment of a data protection law when the bill is tabled so that we can take our nation forward with that I so I would be it would be at the cost of repetition but I am very happy that Chartert Larch Ambus has given me this opportunity to share some of my views on this very very critical subject and I wish that they keep on having such endeavors in future for the benefit of all and I am very thankful to all the participants Sunday late evening is very very precious time because you have to rush to your work tomorrow so you have to prepare for that also there are competing demands of families so thank you very much for joining this this program and I am really indebted to you thank you very much Mr. Vikas Chartert it's really a pleasure to be here Thank you Mr. Mohan Sharma as they say that the whiff of the air tells that what type of knowledge could be shared and that may not be a breach of data privacy but at the same time when your name was recommended then it was said with the as I say it was hammered strongly that you will get the insights which are deep rooted and a deep dive and actually you have taken us to work taking us connected with the three idiots and so on and on the legal journey of data privacy is such that you can speak ours and ours in fact any point of law can be taken as such now like what are the remedies according to you since you have that judicial experience also in case you feel that there is a data privacy what will be the remedial jurisdiction which quote where it is bleached or where the person is residing it will be done how is that going on for a common man to understand Sir this is a very very big field in the way that now the cyberspace the biggest problem is cyberspace is jurisdiction the cyberspace virtually has no jurisdiction so that is the biggest threat if the data breach has happened somewhere where you cannot reach so that is one of the biggest issue but maybe that is an issue which is all pervasive it is affecting all the jurisdiction where electronic evidence comes into question but it should be such that it should be able to protect the privacy of a person because that is what we cherish privacy of a person when it comes into public domain it does a lot of damage to his state of mind is very existence itself so there have been many aspects where people have committed suicide because their private life was shared on a public platform Chatur's example is anybody's guess how much he suffered because of what was done to his speech so first thing is that when an individual is protected everybody on the whole is protected second thing is that wherever the authorities are created whether private or public there should be appropriate control over these authorities rather than filling certain forms and it's not just to have PUC certificate we know that PUC certificate has lost its relevance it should be pollution actually under control so maybe we may inspect the vehicle randomly and find out if it is in fact causing the pollution or not there may be cases when you have got the PUC certificate your PUC certificate only shows that at this particular point of time your vehicle is not polluting like your BP it is at a particular point of time but over a long time it may have different values so in that way the control of data in the possession of various authorities maybe hospitals maybe government offices should be such that whenever data is analyzed the government the authorities are not analyzing a particular individual so if it is being analyzed it is analyzed in anonymous fashion so if that anonymity is given to data I don't think it would be able to do any damage only when data is stacked to a particular person it has the much more potential for damage so if that is done the research in medical the growth of economy that would be ensured we all need demographic trends we all need what particular new diseases are coming how much population is affected by it where the relief is much more required which are the areas which are prone to flood all those things are required for nations growth so if the data is made anonymous if the proposed bill works in that direction I think it would solve most of the problems so that is a small suggestion from my side maybe as the things may develop more things may come up what are the challenges and what are the benefits you feel from the role of artificial intelligence is today's era so it is slightly off the track of the topic sir as we have seen the past is an indicator that it is not the technology which is good or bad it is the person who is using the technology which makes all the difference so artificial intelligence see you can control your home you can do various household works nations can defend themselves with the help of the artificial intelligence a person on individual level you need not go to your office you can have a track of how many employees are really working how many employees have really come how many are on the job you can track anything and everything with that as long as it is used a sword soul is used as a means of defense it is very good but the moment it is used as a means of offense then it comes on the other side of the wrong side of the fence so that is the difference per se technologies neither good nor bad it depends on our discretion our election how we use that technology that is going to make all the difference so we have to control ourselves we have to manage ourselves nobody else would come to manage us this technology human mind is still superior these technologies have been created by human mind and human mind would keep on growing and it is the human mind which can use the technology to the best of advantage so the debate may keep on going whether the technology is good or bad but I think most of it depends on who is the person who is using it and how he has been using it so thank you Mr. Manmohan Sharma it was a pleasure we can wrap it off by saying what you have concluded that technology is a good servant but a bad master so we have to continue to use that and that is the way to sum up for the today's session do stay connected with us thank you everyone and those who have not subscribed to this