Home Ministry set to junk intelligence's plea for exemption from RTI

Economic Times: New Delhi: Tuesday, 24 March 2015.

The home ministry is set to reject the demand of intelligence agencies for a "blanket" exemption from the purview of the Right to Privacy Bill and endorse the existing rider that requires them to intrude one's privacy only in the interest of "sovereignty, integrity and security of India".

The ministry has also decided to back the provision extending the proposed law to all residents of India, unlike the 2011 draft bill that limited its scope to only Indian citizens.

"We will be sending our revised comments on the draft law to the department of personnel & training, supporting the Right to Privacy Bill in its present form," said an official of the ministry. At a meeting of all stakeholders this week, the home ministry had sought to delink itself from the intelligence agencies' reservations on the proposed Bill.

As per the draft Right to Privacy Bill, 2014, the exceptions include "sovereignty, integrity and security of India" and "strategic, scientific or economic interest of the State". This means that interception of an individual's communication data by the intelligence agencies shall not be subject to scrutiny by the Data Protection Authority proposed to be set up under the law, as long as it justifies the specified objectives.

Intelligence agencies have been opposing this "national interest" rider and sought exemption from penalty where "false pretext" is used to obtain information. In their comments on the draft law, the agencies argued that it would not be possible for them to qualify the purpose at the start of each attempt at interception or data collection. Disclosures from various sources and proceedings against the intelligence agency may "leave it saddled with all sorts of litigation", they said adding that being included in the ambit of the law would expose their "methods, capabilities and sources" and affect their functioning.

Incidentally, former Union home secretary Anil Goswami had endorsed the reservations of the intelligence establishment and written to DoPT, which is piloting the bill, seeking that they be kept fully out of purview of the right to privacy law.

With Goswami no longer in the home ministry, there is a view emerging that the reservations of the intelligence agencies may be misplaced. "The interception powers of the agencies will not be affected in any way by the privacy law," said a home ministry official.

An official even stated that the "conditional" exemption of intelligence agencies from the right to privacy may subject them to a "much-needed oversight mechanism". Intelligence agencies including IB and R&AW are at present not governed by the statute.

The draft Right to Privacy law provides for heavy penalties and even imprisonment for acts that invade an individual's privacy. Work on a privacy law had begun in 2010 in the wake of the controversy over Niira Radia tapes. It may be recalled that leakage of the tapes had led industrialist Ratan Tata to approach the Supreme Court against invasion of his privacy.