2020 has been quite the eventful year, and the policy front was no different. Here is a quick breakdown of all that we achieved this year. For 2021, we hope to further increase our collaboration to increase the impact of digital rights across the spectrum of individual liberty and social welfare.
We analysed the privacy of policies of the 4 large telecom service providers to check not only whether they were Puttaswamy-compliant, but also whether they would need updating in the face of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019. We found certain alarming issues in these policies.
The Ministry of Labour released the Draft Code on Social Security (Central) Rules, 2020. In our comments on the draft, we have highlighted the following issues: mandatory aadhaar based verification and inadequate security safeguards for employee databases.
IFF has a published an explainer on the 'AgriStack' proposed by the Centre. Through the explainer we hope to provide an introduction to the 'Agristack' and it's potential benefits and drawbacks, with a larger aim of starting a public conversation about this issue.
IFF has submitted its comments on the draft Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture Policy. Our comments highlighted four main issues: ensuring truly informed consent, orienting new technology towards citizens, implementing a robust regulatory mechanism, and expanding the role of civil society.
IFF’s Working Paper on Privacy Prescriptions for Technology Interventions on COVID-19 in India, affords significant space to the issue of contact tracing technologies. It offers a preliminary breakdown of the Apple and Google's proposed partnership to provide a digital contact tracing solution.