MediaNama’s Take:
The Maharashtra government’s recent plan to share public data, including “non-personal data,” with private companies through its MahaSamanvay platform raises crucial concerns about privacy and data protection. While the government claims it is sharing “non-personal” data, the real concern lies in data triangulation, which can inadvertently lead to the identification of individuals when two or more datasets are combined. Even if a dataset does not directly reveal someone’s identity, combining it with other available data points can potentially expose sensitive information about a person’s community, location, or socioeconomic status.
To illustrate the risks of public access to personal information, we can look at incidents during the 2020 Delhi riots, where miscreants used unofficial third-party applications like “RTO Vehicle Owner Info,” which displayed the personal details of vehicle owners based on the official publicly available vehicle numbers provided by the RTO. Speakers at a MediaNama event highlighted similar concerns regarding personal identification through data triangulation. They noted that narrowing the geolocation of data, such as air pollution data, could potentially identify individuals. MediaNama editor Nikhil Pahwa added that coupling this data with vehicular information could enable misuse to target individuals. At the very least, it could narrow identification to a specific community or area, which still qualifies as personal information.
Moreover, the deletion of provisions from the draft Personal Data Protection Bill (2019), which previously safeguarded “sensitive personal information” like caste, ethnicity, and religious identity, complicates the problem. These alterations, when read alongside the upcoming operationalization of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP) 2023, which lacks necessary provisions to protect such data, further increase concerns about the vulnerability of citizens’ privacy and security.
Therefore, as governments consider monetizing public data, it is crucial that they prioritize stronger safety provisions to prevent misuse and exploitation. While data can drive innovation, it should never come at the cost of an individual’s right to privacy and protection.
What’s the news?
The Maharashtra government plans to monetize non-personal data of government beneficiaries through its digital platform, MahaSamanvay, scheduled to launch on October 2.
An anonymous senior official from the state’s Information and Technology department, quoted in an Indian Express report, said the platform can be used to sell public data to private companies, startups, and financial institutions. This initiative was proposed by Maharashtra’s Information and Technology department to compile data on every beneficiary of government-run schemes across various ministries and departments.
What is MahaSamanvay Portal?
The MahaSamanvay portal,…
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