CYBERSPACE: PRIVACY AND OTHER CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES

“True power of any law lies on its ability and ease of enforcement.”

The paper deals with the new emerging issues, which are due to technological, social and
economical developments in the Internet world, also known as Cyberspace. We do almost
thousands of surfing and other works, for which we use Internet, which makes us vulnerable to
infringement of privacy related to confidential information while e-commerce, social
networking, etc. We are exposed to infringement and victimization every next second when we
are on Internet with very minimal protection. Cyberspace is not only susceptible to Privacy
issues but also posse’s proximate danger to other basic Constitutional and Human Rights. Indian
perspectives of such violations are different because we don’t have any specific legislation
governing issues arising specific to cyberspace like liability, jurisdiction, damages, etc. whereas
nations like UK, Germany, USA, etc. have specific legislation governing Cyberspace activity
like DPA, 1998 ECPA, 1986 USA,, respectively. We refer to IT Act 2000 which was later on
amended in the year 2008, in order to facilitate the e-commerce activities but it was never
concerned about the privacy and other issues related to Cyberspace. Hence, the numbers of
Cybercrimes like identity theft, privacy breach has escalated in past one decade as the users also
increased in same number but the legal status of such issues are still on the same page with more
complexity. 52th Report on Cyber Security and Right to Privacy by the Parliamentary Standing
Committee on Information Technology stated same issues in their report that increase in use of
Internet and Computer in India is coupled with inadequate protections, ICT abuse, Privacy
breach, etc. The researcher would like to draw some analogy between different nation’s
legislations with respect to Cyberspace privacy issues and other basis Constitutional and Human
Rights issues.

Keywords: Privacy, Cyberspace, Internet, E-commerce, Constitutional Rights, Human Rights,

Legislation.