{"id":254988,"date":"2026-05-25T11:17:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/weaponising-privacy-to-curtail-the-right-to-know\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T11:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:35:12","slug":"weaponising-privacy-to-curtail-the-right-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/weaponising-privacy-to-curtail-the-right-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Weaponising privacy to curtail the right to know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/opinion\/weaponising-privacy-to-curtail-the-right-to-know-101779722272943.html\">Weaponising privacy to curtail the right to know<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/opinion\/weaponising-privacy-to-curtail-the-right-to-know-101779722272943.html\">https:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/opinion\/weaponising-privacy-to-curtail-the-right-to-know-101779722272943.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-25 11:17:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.hindustantimes.com\">www.hindustantimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"content\">Five separate public interest challenges to the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act now await the attention of a five-judge bench at the Supreme Court. Their resolution will decide whether democracy is to deepen and become truly an enterprise between citizens and administration or drifts the populace into suppression.<\/p>\n<p>It is too often forgotten that the right to know is part and parcel of freedom of expression \u2014 the anchor of democratic functioning, which includes accountability, transparency and participation. (HT\u2009Archive)<span\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"content \">The petitioners argue that under the guise of protecting privacy, the people\u2019s right to access information is being deliberately and unreasonably weakened. For one, a \u201cdata fiduciary\u201d \u2014 any government, corporation, hospital, university or news organisation \u2014 that has collected personal information can now hold it close. That is a separate concern.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content \">The disquiet is over Section 44(3). It allows government-held information to be withheld simply because it is to be treated as \u201cpersonal\u201d, with no duty to weigh privacy against transparency, accountability or the public\u2019s right to know. The Court itself has framed the central question with admirable precision: What is public data and what is private data \u2014 and can information about a person holding public office ever be called private?<\/p>\n<p class=\"content \">The petitioners argue that Section 44(3) is far too broad, fails the proportionality test laid down by the nine-judge bench in Puttaswamy \u2014 legitimacy, necessity and minimal impairment \u2014 and drives a coach and horses through Article 19(2), which permits only narrow and carefully tailored restrictions on the fundamental right to know.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content \">It strips away the public interest override built into Section 8(1)(j) of the Right To Information Act 2005, which allows personal information to be withheld only where it has no relation to public activity or public interest, or where disclosure would amount to an unwarranted invasion of privacy. Given that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/opinion\/weaponising-privacy-to-curtail-the-right-to-know-101779722272943.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Weaponising privacy to curtail the right to know https:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/opinion\/weaponising-privacy-to-curtail-the-right-to-know-101779722272943.html Publish Date: 2026-05-25 11:17:00 Source Domain:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254990,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/ht-img\/img\/2026\/05\/25\/550x309\/It-is-too-often-forgotten-that-the-right-to-know-i_1779722270134.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254988"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254991,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254988\/revisions\/254991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}