Indian Government May Make It Compulsory For Facebook, Google To Share User Data

The Indian government is considering making it mandatory for tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon to sell and share collected public data about users to anyone seeking access to it such as the private and government firms.

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The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) is working on issuing guidelines under the Information Technology Act where these tech firms would have to share the available information that they collate during their operations including traffic, buying, and illness patterns. However, the plan is currently under works and final decision will only be taken post an exhaustive consultation process, reports the Economic Times.

These new guidelines will be largely aimed towards ensuring competition and providing universal access to a database generated using user-collected data. This data can be either shared free of cost or for a fee that tech giants decide to charge. “These big tech companies certainly were the first ones to come up with the idea and do the work, so just like in critical medicines, they should have the right to charge an economic fee for sharing it,” said an official.

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Moreover, MeitY also shared a set of questions with specialists surrounding how public data should be treated and if it should be a part of the proposed Privacy Data Protection Bill. “We will soon begin consultations on this issue. However, the clear thinking in the government is that the data collected belongs to Indian citizens and should be available to Indians,” said the official.

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