Joint Committee summons tech giants to appear before panel to discuss Data Protection Bill

Two sittings of the Joint Committee will be held on October 28 and 29 to discuss the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019, a notice issued to the members said. Senior officials of social media giants Facebook and Twitter have been asked to appear before the committee to discuss data protection and privacy issues. Facebook officials have to make a presentation on the bill at 11 am on Friday.  While representatives from Twitter and Amazon Web Services will present their oral evidence on October 28, those from Paytm and Google will present the same on the following day, as per the Lok Sabha Secretariat notice.

The Joint Committee, which was constituted on December 11, 2019, will attend the meeting at the Parliament House on both days. The members of the Committee include Meenakshi Lekhi, SS Ahluwalia, PP Chaudhary, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Derek O' Brien, among others. The Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 seeks to provide protection of personal data of individuals, create a framework for processing such information, and establishes a Data Protection Authority for the purpose.  

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Personal Data Protection Bill 2019

While introducing the draft bill in parliament last year, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said it empowers the Centre to seek anonymous personal and non-personal data from companies such as Facebook and Google. But the opposition Congress had raised concerns on the use of such data in some cases, especially those involving national security.

Some legal experts had also flagged the issue, saying that the legislation will allow the government to gain unaccounted access to personal data of users. The matter was subsequently raised to the joint parliamentary committee headed by Lekhi.  

"Whosoever is required, an individual or an entity will be asked to depose before the panel on the issue of protection of data and its privacy and their respective social media platforms will be thoroughly examined by the panel," PTI quoted Meenakshi Lekhi as saying.  

The committee has representatives from across the political spectrum and the deliberations on the bill are being held from the "national interest perspective. It would be inappropriate and unfair to look at the calling of social media platform from the political prism," the BJP MP said.

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(With inputs from agency)