Let’s plug a privacy loophole in India’s account aggregator system
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. As regular readers of this column will know by now, I have long advocated the benefits of embedding regulatory principles directly into digital infrastructure.
Having worked on different versions of India’s digital public infrastructure, I have come to see, first-hand, how well this techno-legal approach addresses the many challenges that will arise in the context of a rapidly digitizing economy. When I discuss these ideas in public, the example I often give is of India’s Account Aggregator framework—the consent-based, data sharing system that has now processed nearly 125 million ‘consents’ and enabled all manner of financial products.
It exemplifies the approach I am talking about by demonstrating how data protection principles can be incorporated directly into the design of digital infrastructure. In order to process the personal data of a data principal, the data fiduciary must first obtain her informed consent.
In particular, the data fiduciary must inform the data principal of the purposes for which such data will be processed and can only collect as much data as is strictly necessary to fulfil the stated purposes. No data can be retained for longer than is strictly necessary in order to satisfy specified purposes and it cannot be used for any purpose other than those for which consent has been obtained.
India’s Account Aggregator system has been built around a technology construct—referred to as the ‘consent artefact’—that embodies these privacy principles in a digital format. Entities that want to use financial data (called financial information users or FIUs), such as lenders looking to appraise loan-worthiness, must make a data request using this artefact and will only be
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