Balancing Surveillance and Privacy: Analyzing Body-Worn Camera Use by Police in Light of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023
摘要
Body-worn cameras (“BWCs”) have been deployed by various law enforcement agencies around the globe with an objective to enhance trust, transparency, accountability, and responsibilities between the people and the instrumentalities of law enforcement. India has also joined the bandwagon of deployment in order to have multi-fold benefits such as real-time recording of public-police interactions, accountability for misconduct and robust evidence collection for court cases. The BWCs’ deployment sits at the core of broader discourse of law enforcement and right to privacy in India. Right to privacy in India gets its statutory inclusion and enforcement mechanism through the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (“DPDP Act, 2023”). The DPDP Act, 2023 creates an exemption of non-consensual data access under certain legitimate uses in favor of the state’s instrumentalities. The non-consensual data access provision under the DPDP Act, 2023 is antithetical to the very notion of right to privacy. In the absence of consent, access to data without significant safeguards for its processing poses a risk of a graver violation of right to privacy. The critical analysis of the interface of BWCs with DPDP Act, 2023 focusing on consent, purpose requirement and data security forms the core of this chapter. This chapter deals with the issue in three parts. First, fundamental groundwork of BWCs and its benefits in law enforcement is explicated. Second, the interface of BWCs with the relevant provisions of the DPDP Act, 2023 is critically analyzed on various parameters and potential privacy concerns that are posed by deployment of BWCs. Lastly, the chapter concludes by suggesting policy recommendations that could enhance the deployment and ensure accountability, transparency and trust.