New data law may mute Alexa, Google home

Many devices and apps have been launched in the recent past which uses our biometrics like finger print, face scan & iris scans. These are used for various purposes like improving our convenience, security etc. Example, asking a Google Home or Alexa device to play your favourite song, unlocking a mobile phone with your fingerprint or face scan, and using iris scan to access your bank. All of these may just become difficult if the draft Data Protection Bill gets Parliament nod in its current form.

The Data Protection Act’s clause 92 seeks to ban the processing of certain forms of biometric data, unless the law permits it. This will impact the industries on a large scale because nowadays almost everything is connected with our biometrics, and if a ban comes all the industries or companies which are dependent on using our biometrics for providing various services may collapse. The impact will be huge on almost every sectors ranging from digital commerce to banking, health care and even automobile industry. Major players like Google and Amazon will be affected badly, both of them have voice assistants and various other products and will be directly impacted by clause 92.

Several other areas which the Clause 92 of the Data Protection Bill are, Mobile manufacturers, Fintech firms, Hospitals/health care companies and institutions, smart T.V manufacturers, voice based household equipment manufacturers such as Google and Amazon. Mobile phone makers may be the worst hit because they will have to start storing all biometric data locally and this will be an added infrastructure cost. Since biometric data is classified as sensitive data, local storage and processing of this information does not make any sense.

Card companies are also to be affected, consent mechanism is at the heart of data sharing and the idea is to make the customer the owner of his/her data. According to the Account Aggregator framework, the customer should be given the right to approve the sharing of data between two banks. This is done in order to make the customer powerful and also to educate him/her about how the data is being used. The Account Aggregator framework is approved by The Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC).

Therefore, according to the proposed legislation by the Data Protection Bill all of the above mentioned sectors are going to take a massive hit and it is high time that they adopt necessary measures to face it.