Pushback Against Big Tech: Indian Govt Mulls Directing Facebook, Google To Share Anonymised Data With India Datasets Platform

In a significant development, the central government is reportedly contemplating issuing a directive to major tech corporations such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon, urging them to share anonymised personal data with a government-backed India datasets platform.

As reported by Indian Express, the move aims to address concerns about the ownership and intellectual property rights associated with non-personal data, which forms the foundation for artificial intelligence (AI) models.

As part of the upcoming Digital India Bill, an addition has been made by the IT Ministry, mandating big tech companies to deposit all the non-personal data they possess into the India datasets platform.

This non-personal data, in its basic form, excludes personally identifiable information and includes aggregated datasets like health statistics, climate data, and traffic information.

The proposed legislation suggests that when users agree, as per the terms of service, to allow companies to use their anonymised personal data, this information must be deposited into the India datasets platform.

The government argues that big tech companies have profited by building algorithms using Indians' non-personal data and cannot claim exclusive ownership over it.

The Digital India Bill, a crucial component of the comprehensive legal framework, includes measures such as the recently-notified Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, the draft Indian Telecommunication Bill, 2022, and a policy addressing the governance of non-personal data.

A working group report released in October outlined the India datasets program as a unified national platform for data sharing and exchange.

It envisions participation from various stakeholders, including government bodies, private companies, MSMEs, academia, and researchers.

The report suggests that non-personal data held by the Indian datasets platform could be monetized, contributing to the growth of the artificial intelligence ecosystem in India.