India House passes bill to ease BigTech data compliance

The lower house in the parliament of India approved updates to a bill that would ease data storage, processing and transfer standards for BigTech companies.

The lower house of India’s parliament voted in approval of a bill that will ease data compliance regulations for Big Tech companies, according to a report from Bloomberg. 

On Aug. 7, the legislation that was approved by the house will ease storage, processing and transfer standards for major global tech companies like Google, Meta and Microsoft and also local firms seeking international expansion.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2023 targets exports of data sourced from India, allowing companies to do so except to countries prohibited by the government.

As it currently stands, the bill requires government consent prior to BigTech companies collecting personal data. It also prevents them from selling it for reasons not listed in the contract, meaning no anonymization of personal data for use in artificial intelligence (AI) training, for example.

These updates to the bill would reduce compliance requirements for companies, though it has to pass through the upper parliamentary house prior to its finalization.

India is the world’s most populous country with billions of internet users, which makes it a key market for growth.

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Concerns over data misuse in the emerging tech industry and particularly from BigTech companies have been a growing priority for regulators across the globe. 

The rapid emergence of AI as an accessible tool for the general public has caused major concerns among regulators over the way these products collect and utilize user data.

India has also been named as one of the countries that is a part of collaborations with the Biden Administration in the United States to create an international framework for AI.

One recent and major development in the emerging tech scene that has caused concerns over data collection, has been with the launch of the decentralized digital identity verification protocol Worldcoin.

So far, the project has launched 1,500 of its iris scanning orbs in countries all around the world. India is home to two orbs in the northern city of Delhi and the southern city of Bangalore, according to the Worldcoin website. 

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