This post was written by Cynthia O’Donoghue.

A nonprofit research organisation, the Indian Centre for Internet and Society (ICIS), has issued an open call for comments on its draft Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013 (the Bill). Consultations on the Bill started in April 2013, with a series of seven roundtable talks being held in partnership

Shri Anand Sharma, Union Minister for Commerce, Industry & Textiles in India, emphasised, at a bilateral meeting with the European Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, that in order for the Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) between the EU and India to be successful, India must be declared an adequate country for data transfers.

A few days following the concession made by BlackBerry manufacturers, Research in Motion (RIM), to provide Indian security agencies access to their encrypted data, India’s Home Minister P. Chidambaram held “security to be more important than privacy”.

Security concerns in India have certainly risen following the terror attack on Mumbai in November 2008, the worsening