India’s Justice League: Young Guns Behind The Right to Privacy Win

S Prasanna (left) and Gautam Bhatia (Right)

(Photo altered by The Quint)

Even as the country sat with their eyes glued to the right to privacy debate that unfolded in the Supreme Court of India, a group of lawyers and petitioners fought tooth and nail till the apex court conceded on Thursday, upholding it as a fundamental right.

Here's a look at some of the people who heralded the movement, helping mould the structure that will now govern digital lives and identities in India.

S Prasanna

A Delhi-based coder-turned-lawyer, S Prasanna, 34, undertook the fight for right to privacy after he realised that nothing could be more flawed than technology.

“I can see through that clearly, being fully aware of how technology can have design limitations”, he told the Indian Express.

Convinced that biometrics is not a solution with an error-rate higher than 10 percent, Prasanna believes that technology ruling lives can “only be deemed as fair if it is provably so”.

Apar Gupta

A Columbia School graduate, Apar Gupta's Twitter handle was a rulebook of sorts for those following the right to privacy debate.

Gupta, 33, is of the opinion that while the society will truly be digital one day, a three-way marriage between civil rights, constitutionality and digitisation is necessary, else the society begets something that is "very unjust".

Terming the government's push for a mandatory Aadhaar link-up as 'administrative fetish', Apar said to the Indian Express that digitisation enables governments to create an illusion of efficiency.

It’s on a good-faith basis to some degree, but all digitisation is not good. Digital IDs by themselves have resulted in savings, but that has been without Aadhaar. Conservative estimates are that nearly Rs 11,000 crore has been spent on Aadhaar.

Gautam Bhatia

A National Law School of India University student and a Rhodes scholar, Bhatia, 28, advocated for the right to privacy saying that its violation enables “discrimination”.

His initiation into the privacy debate was when he was asked to work on a paper on surveillance in India by his alma mater. He calls it his “golden moment”.

Bhatia is of the belief that “societies where privacy is devalued become totalitarian” and the ideal right to privacy law should be based on the “principles of informed and specific consent”.

Informed consent means the person is aware of what use it’s being put to and specific consent means that the authorities must seek consent for each specific act.

Bhatia<i></i>

Apart from his legal affiliations, he is described as a sci-fi geek and also edits a UK-based science fiction magazine called Strange Horizons. He has also authored a book examining freedom of speech under the Indian Constitution called Offend, Shock, or Disturb.

Kritika Bhardwaj

A Delhi University graduate, Bhardwaj, 26, had her brush with Aadhaar issues even before she went on to pursue her masters in Information Law from Cambridge. She dug deep into the matter and researched on international laws, biometrics, etc.

We were shocked by the Centre’s arguments that privacy is not a fundamental right. We had prepared things pertinent to Aadhaar, of projects, exclusion and biometrics. But when the government made this plea, we all sat up and decided to help push this back.

Bhardwaj to <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/india/rhodes-scholar-to-carnatic-singer-meet-4-young-lawyers-in-privacy-fight-4785544/lite/">Indian Express</a>

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