The Right to Privacy in the Information Era: A South Asian Perspective
Authors
Althaf Marsoof
B.Sc. (Curtin University of Technology), Attorney-at-Law. The author is a State Counsel in the Attorney General’s Department of Sri Lanka and is also a Visiting Lecturer in Business and Computer Law at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology
The famous saying that “Your freedom ends where my nose begins”1 may, in the electronic era, be transformed to mean “Your freedom ends where my ‘Network’ begins”. The progression into an e-literate society in which the electronic medium is used to transact all forms of business – including government (e-governance) – has greatly increased the need to protect the privacy of the individual from invasions not only by the State, but also from others who seek to profit from such intrusions. This paper probes into the latest trends in modern technology and analyses the existing legal framework in Sri Lanka and India in support of the argument that the right to privacy must be guarded as a constitutional right.
