A definite legal definition of ‘privacy’ is not available. Some legal experts tend to define privacy as a human right enjoyed by every human being by his or her existence. It depends on no instrument or charter. Privacy can also extend to other aspects, including bodily integrity, personal autonomy, informational self-determination, protection from state surveillance, dignity, confidentiality, compelled speech and freedom to dissent or move or think. In short, the right to privacy must be determined on a case-by-case basis.
2. A definite legal definition of ‘privacy’ is not available. Some legal experts
tend to define privacy as a human right enjoyed by every human being
by his or her existence. It depends on no instrument or charter. Privacy
can also extend to other aspects, including bodily integrity, personal
autonomy, informational self-determination, protection from state
surveillance, dignity, confidentiality, compelled speech and freedom to
dissent or move or think. In short, the right to privacy must be
determined on a case-by-case basis. Privacy enjoys a robust legal
framework internationally. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, 1948 and Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR), 1966, legally protect persons against
“arbitrary interference” with one’s privacy, family, home,
correspondence, honour and reputation. India signed and ratified the
ICCPR on April 10, 1979, without reservation. Article 7 and 8 of the
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, 2012, recognises
the respect for private and family life, home and communications. Article
8 mandates protection of personal data and its collection for a specified
legitimate purpose.
3. CAMPAIGNS:
Public campaigns to promote online freedom are central to
our work — the Internet Freedom Foundation traces its
origin to the successful Save The Internet in campaign for
Net Neutrality.
In each campaign, our aims are to:
Inform and educate citizens by simplifying complex policy
narratives and explaining how it impacts them personally.
Build support among citizens, businesses and other
organizations for the position that promotes freedom.
Constructively engage with policy makers across political
lines to bring about positive changes.
4. INTERVIEW:
Our interest in doing the interviews was to get an insight on what Indian citizens perceive
about privacy. In order to understand the privacy perceptions, we kept the questions of
the interview to be open-ended and let the participants speak about their reactions. In
this chapter, we discussion about the interviews we conducted and the privacy results
along with the insights from the inter-views. Section 3.1 describes the sample that we
had in the interviews; Section 3.2 describes the methodology that we used in collecting
data; Section 3.3 concludes with some of the takeaways from the interviews.
5. Focus Group Discussions.
In this chapter, we present the details from
Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) that we did
to understand the privacy perceptions of the
users. Section 4.1 describes the sample of
participants who were part of the FGDs;
Section 4.2 describes the methodology that
we used in collecting data through FGDs;
Section 4.3 concludes with some of the
takeaways from the focus group discussions.
6. SURVEY :
After completing the interviews and FGDs, we
developed the survey questionnaire and collected
data from dierent parts of India. In this chapter, we
present the results from the data that we collected.
Section 5.1 describes the sample of the participants
who were part of the survey data collection; Section
5.2 describes the methodology that we used in
collecting data; Section 5.3 concludes with some of
the takeaways from the survey.