Death by compliance

If you are running a business, almost any kind of compliance needs expertise. That’s why it takes time. Costs money. Now throw confusion in this mix, and you are courting a lot of trouble

Trai's data privacy recommendations could have extended to many sectors before its wings were clipped

But it's not the only regulator nibbling at the data privacy issue at the moment

Many sector regulators have tried to deal with privacy by trying to secure the systems that are used to process them

But the new data privacy law in the making could change the way every business runs in this country

Ah! The subtle art of overreach. Calculating. Quiet. Amidst all the brouhaha, sliding unnoticeably through until it’s revealed. That, in a nutshell, would be the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in the year 2018; a year when little can (or should) surprise you anymore.

Since its inception, for twenty-one years, Trai has limited itself to the telecom business. Ambling. Regulating. Putting out recommendations. Until July this year, when it decided it wanted more. The body put out its data privacy recommendations to the Department of Telecom (DoT). By referring to mobile devices and applications as faucets to the telecom pipes, it overreached to control whatever faucets do.

AUTHOR

Vivek Ananth

After dabbling with an auditing job and then at a software product company, Vivek Ananth has decided to take the plunge into journalism. In his last assignment, Vivek was at Cogencis, a financial newswire. A Chartered Accountant, Vivek completed his post-graduate diploma in journalism from IIJNM Bengaluru in 2016. At The Ken, Vivek will write on the intersection of technology and business.

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