India’s top court has unanimously declared that privacy is a fundamental right, in a landmark judgment that could derail the world’s largest biometric identity card scheme. Privacy advocates hailed the decision by the supreme court on Thursday, which they said could have far-reaching implications including for the decriminalisation of homosexuality and bans on the consumption of beef or alcohol. Several lawsuits in past years have argued that the Aadhaar system breached the right to privacy, prompting the supreme court to constitute a bench in July to clarify whether such a right existed in the Indian constitution. “This case was essentially on the existence of the right to privacy, but the true test of a constitutional doctrine is its application. And the bigger, decades-old question of whether India’s 1.3bn citizens had the fundamental right to privacy had also finally been resolved.

Source: The Guardian August 24, 2017 06:16 UTC