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Privacy Act versus Right to Information Act

M S Siddiqui
Part Time Teacher, Leading University
Pursuing PhD in Open University, Malaysia
e-mail: shah@banglachemical.com

The democracy has pre-condition for good governance and effective democratic institutions are
essential for democratizing the society, human right and also free flow of information. Democracy
cannot flourish in the absence of good governance. The economic development also linked to
democracy. Democracy serves properly with transparency and accountability. The free flow of
information has a precondition to protect state security, personal and private secrecy for safety
and peaceful private life.

GDP of Bangladesh growing at about 6% for last 2 decades and second generation citizens are
living in the cities. They are economically secured and the lifestyles changing steadily in slow
pace and citizen now prefer individualism. They are trying to have private life with out interference
of relatives and neighbors.

On the other hand, privacy is a fundamental human right. It underpins human dignity and other
values such as freedom of association. It has become one of the most important human rights of
the modern age. Privacy is recognized around the world in diverse regions and cultures. It is
protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, and in many other international and regional human rights treaties. Nearly every
country in the world includes a right of privacy in its constitution. In many countries, international
agreements that recognize privacy rights such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights or the European Convention on Human Rights have been adopted into domestic law.

The society recently experiences a serious violation of privacy of private life of a girl. The actress
cum model girl did an immoral act of having physical relation with boyfriend before marriage and
the boyfriend did the same immoral act and again did a crime by revealing movie of their acts in
internet. The boyfriends have no right of revealing the private information of his girlfriend. The boy
did immoral act and criminal offence by displaying the recorded private relationship through
internet.

There was a debate over discloser of information of resources and transaction of certain political
leaders and business tycoons during last caretaker government (before RTI Act 2009) to the joint
forces for prevention of corruption.

Government use to publish list of loan defaulters and Central Bank use to disclose certain
information regarding loan and related issued breaking the confidential banker-customer
relationship. The credit Information Bureau (CIB) of Bangladesh Bank working on disclosing the
information through web site for use of everybody. This is also not ethical and beyond the limit
standard discloser.

The individuals or other organizations for the purpose of investigation, employment or any other
obligation obliged to reveal certain personal information. It is uncertain whether the information
are legitimately authorized by certain laws of the land. These information may the law enforcing
agency may required for the investigation into potential risk, suspected offence or prosecution of
an offender to obtain the records without the consent of the individual.
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Employees in Government or corporation should be told whether personal files are kept on them
and whether unauthorized persons may have access to those files. Many organizations have a
policy to allow access to employee information. Employees may deserve guarantee of secrecy
and standard policy of access to the data or information.

The courts proceedings are open to the public and sometimes access is restricted or information
suppressed to protect a witness or in the administration of justice. The historic judgment against
contempt of court against Prime Minister Sk Hasina (during previous tenure of 1996-2001) was
only shown to her counsel only with out any open verdict. The Prime Minster got the privilege as
head of the government not the individual citizen Sk Hasina.

Some evidence of victim sexual offences shall be kept secret to honor privacy of the persons
involved. The proceeding of Family court for divorce, child custody shall be in closed door and
restricted to excess of related few persons only. The lawyers, judges, persons directly involved in
the case and any experts consulting on the case may see any of the documents and judgments
may be published without name of parties referred and involved and pass it to very limited
persons only for enforcement of the verdict. The camera trial shall be kept off limit of media and
others at large.

Bangladesh now has Right to Information Act (RTI). The Act makes provisions for ensuring free
flow of information and people’s right to information. The freedom of thought, conscience and
speech is recognized in the Constitution as a fundamental right and the right to information is an
alienable part of it. All public, autonomous and statutory organizations and in private
organizations run on government or foreign funding shall have obligation to provide requested
information to the citizen upon proper request.

Citizen also obliged to provide personal information to Income tax authority, law enforcers under
respective laws. The private business also obliged to provide certain information to different
government regulatory authority. These government departments can disclose the information
strictly as per Right to Information Act. The RTI empowered other citizen to obtain formation
which is essential for other purpose and not harmful to person concerned. The board of Revenue
(NBR) recently declined request from Anti Corruption Commission (DUDUK) to reveal income
and other details of some personalities.

Sub-section (h), (i), (j) and (r) of section 7 of the RTI Act, provide that any information which may
offend the privacy of one’s life, any information which may endanger life or physical safety
of any person any information given secretly to assist the law enforcing agencies, or any
personal information protected by any law, are not subject to mandatory disclosure by
government and certain private organization.

The act prohibits discloser of information related to Intellectual property, income tax, VAT or other
tax so that none is benefited or loser. It prohibit proving private information if there is risk of
loss or personal loss. It prohibits reveal of information of one person for benefit of others.

Bangladesh does not regulate unsolicited e-mails at present. Internet service providers may have
a lot of information about the users because servers routinely record information about
users' e-mail. Trade secrets and other confidential information do pose possible legal
problems. This is a grave violation of individual privacy. It is for purposes of maintaining a
minimal standard of behavior in business sector that many countries have outlawed
unsolicited commercial e-mails.

There is no restriction on private individuals and other professional to keep secrecy of

information. Some government multinationals companies and some government
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departments have some privacy policy. There is no Privacy act or privacy rule and
regulation to protect individual citizen for protection of secrecy of their private information.
As per the Telecommunications Act, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), police and
Detective Branch (DB) can overheard anyone's phone call for the security of the country
2001 Telecommunications Act that would make bugged phone calls and intercepted e-
mails permissible in legal proceedings.

On the other hand, the information collected by Government is a resource of the citizen and
managed on their behalf by Government. There is no general right for people to see the
information held by government departments. People should be able to obtain access to this
resource and to participate in government policy development and decision making. Freedom of
information and privacy act or rule aims to ensure that the information collected about people by
government agencies is accurate and not misused. Certain categories of exemptions require the
agency to consult with other third parties before deciding whether to apply the exemption. These
are documents: affecting inter-government or local government relations, affecting personal
privacy, relating to business affairs, for example trade secrets, and research documents. Parents
can only obtain this information about a child under 18 years of age without the consent of the
child.

As per Freedom of Information Act in UK, all people have the right to access documents
containing their personal information about themselves and if necessary to ask that the
information be amended or that an explanation be attached to the record if the document contains
information that is incomplete, incorrect, out of date or misleading.

The act protect the citizen reserve the right to regardless of when the file was created, a person
can still access personal documents. Agencies must consult with individuals before releasing
documents containing personal information about them to another person.

The collection of information should have certain guide of collection and use and distribution to
others keeping the rights of the citizens. It must regulate the manner and purpose of collection,
requests from individuals, or from other people, agencies or bodies, storage and security of
information, availability of information and access to it, alteration of information held by agencies,
obligation to maintain accurate information, limits the permitted uses of information on agencies
disclosing information held by them. The local government offices have no reliable storage and
method of secrecy of private information and issue of birth certificate has no credibility even at
home and abroad. There is no proper training of personnel and they seems don’t have any
commitment of such a noble work of maintaining national data.

The citizen revealed information to service providers and other in course of their daily life and
these should be regulated by law of privacy. The law also has jurisdiction over information hold by
government departments, service providers and other small business and associations. It should
regulate collection, use, disclosure, quality, security, openness, access to and correction of
personal information, including sensitive information and health information. It should prohibits the
collection of sensitive information about an individual except in certain circumstances, such as
when the individual has consented or the collection is required by law. There are specific
provisions in relation to the collection of health information.

There is a common practice of asking for private information by different service providers. These
organizations like hospital, Real estate, clubs and co-operatives societies etc are asking private
information and there is no guide line or law to limit the collection of information and protecting
those in safe manner and use only on necessity.

Bangladesh should have Privacy act, updated ICT Act and revised acts to protect the private,
professional and business information.
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