Government Surveillance & The Right To Privacy: A Comparative Constitutional Analysis Of India, The EU & Switzerland
Mr. Hetkumar Joshi, LL.M. (Intellectual Property), Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India.
ABSTRACT
“Privacy is a basic human right, not a privilege”. In India, after the landmark judgment of K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India the Right to Privacy was established as a sword cast upon the State to protect the privacy of all persons and, at the same time, to shield them from unwarranted intervention by the State in the privacy of individuals. The State has undergone a digital transformation, and the governance of individuals is now data-driven. The State has been collecting information about individuals through multiple platforms as part of mass surveillance systems, collecting various types of data. The collection of such a large number of people in India has raised questions regarding the encroachment upon the private lives of individuals by the State and the further infringement of informational autonomy.
In such circumstances, the privacy of individuals becomes vulnerable, as accountability for such infringement and the indiscriminate collection of data under the pretext of State security shall be subject to judicial adjudication and scrutiny. The paper analyses the existing developments in State-led digital surveillance of individuals and the legal framework compelling the State to adhere to privacy standards, with a comparative study of the European Union’s “Rights-First” model and Switzerland’s “three-layer shield” for the protection of privacy and other laws of the respective States.
Keywords: Right to Privacy, State Surveillance, Data Collection, Data Protection, Digital Governance.
