Before the Panama Papers were published in 2016, what if the Indian Express had been hauled before a data protection board for violating the privacy of those who held accounts in tax havens?
If the latest iteration of India’s privacy bill passes, that just might be the case for future exposés, with the government removing exemptions from data protection obligations for journalistic work. This means that for any story containing personal data, journalists may have to prove before the proposed data protection board – and there’s no clarity as to who is on this board – that their story was in public interest.
