Violation of right to digital privacy

The concept of “right to privacy” can be “the right to be let alone”, which was coined by Thomas Cooley in his 'Treaties in the Law of Torts', 1st Edition, 1879, at page 29 under the heading of Personal Immunity which can be converted today as right to digital privacy. Many of us find that our lives have become substantially dependent on the internet and deeply tied with a number of social networking sites like, facebook. Many of us are being also deprived of right to privacy by it but lawyers, judges, legislators and legal scholars have been slow in adapting the law to tackle this dynamic and dangerous threat to privacy, especially in Bangladesh.  That is why the protection of right to digital privacy is a demand of today's world.
The right to digital or internet privacy is a vital part of the fundamental right to life under Article 43 of the Constitution of Bangladesh. It states that 'every citizen shall have the right, subject to any reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interests of the security of the State, public order, public morality or public health (a) to be secured in his home against entry, search and seizure; and (b) to the privacy of his correspondence and other means of communication'. Here the phrase 'other means of communication' is very significant, which can be interpreted as 'Right to Digital Privacy' because the social networking site namely facebook is the most familiar means of communication.

Laws regulating Right to Digital Privacy
Unlike the United States or the European Union, Bangladesh does not have a comprehensive statute for data protection and digital privacy. Bangladesh Parliament had passed 'The Information & Communication Technology (ICT) Act 2006' aimed at enhancing the use of ICT in all spheres of activity. The objective of the law is to expand the suitable use of information technology in overall social system. The Act touches the issue of privacy in section 68, 78 and 79. These are the good provisions in protection of privacy rights in the context of Bangladesh but on the other hand,  the provisions of the ICT Act have long been considered inadequate to deal with privacy claims of the sort that have become common in light of the proliferation of second generation social networking sites like facebook. The first hurdle created by the Act is its narrow and restrictive definition of the term 'data', which requires it to be prepared in a formalised manner. The scope of such formalisation remains ambiguous and prima facie does not cover user data available informally on facebook. There is only one section (section 509) in the Penal Code relating to the right to privacy that says about the privacy of women. Because of the misuse of facebook, many girls or women's privacy are being disclosed, which is an offence under section 509 of Penal Code.

Section 63 of ICT Act and Right to Digital Privacy
Section 63 of the ICT Act is a tool to save the right to digital privacy, which states about the punishment for disclosure of confidentiality and privacy. This section pledges for the protection of right to digital privacy but the reality is that this type of offence is occurring every moment by the facebook users. They are disclosing many personal information, data, electronic record of others and that is why these information, data and documents are open to the whole world, which is an offence under section 63 of ICT Act. However, this is a good provision of law but we cannot see any action against this type of offence because being unaware, lack of knowledge, and training of the law enforcing agencies.

Digital Privacy Concerning Issues
Considering the present situation, we see that some facebook users are sharing false information and fake photography against the Shahbagh Gono Jagoron Mancha. That is why the common people are being confused about the novelty of this peaceful demand to uphold the spirit of our independence. On the other hand, facebook was followed by coverage of a more unpleasant story of a security consultant who used a moderately sophisticated code to scan facebook profiles to collect data not hidden by the users' privacy settings. Facebook sets a particular privacy setting as default so that anyone can see a person's information unless privacy settings are actively changed. Therefore, a sizeable proportion of the users inadvertently allow public access to parts of their personally identifying information merely by failing to change their privacy settings. A study shows that 41 per cent children and 44 per cent adult facebook users have open privacy settings, mostly arising out of a failure to change the default settings.
It may further be pointed out that even for more aware and technology savvy users facebook's privacy controls may prove to be insufficient insofar as a significant portion of their personal data may be contained on someone else's facebook page. For instance, a user may be tagged in a photograph or comment posted by a friend and is unable to exercise any control over how that data is presented and what privacy settings are applied by the friends.

Privacy Policies of facebook and terms of use agreements
The privacy policies of facebook aim at disclaiming any form of liability and giving websites the maximum possible freedom with respect to the use of the users' personal information, privacy policies more often than not prove to be unfavorable contracts binding consumers leaving them with little or no leeway in seeking legal action against the site. As a result, users are likely to seek challenge and not enforce the binding effect of such policies. The various challenges that may be raised against this include the absence of free consent, unconscionable terms and illusory and unenforceable nature.
The most obvious challenge to the enforceability of the privacy policies of social networking sites is the absence of free consent. According to section 10 of the Contract Act 1872, contract is enforceable only if both the parties to it have manifested their full and free consent to all its terms. Recently authorities suggest that users are bound only to such online agreements that compulsorily require them to view the agreement in their totality in order to complete a transaction and click on the terms- 'I Agree' (click wrap agreements), a process that is commonly used for the installation of new software.
It is abundantly clear that law addressing various issues of privacy violation needs to be strengthened. While various privacy torts such as appropriation, breach of confidentiality and product liability apply directly to the cases under consideration. Considering above issues, the Cyber Tribunal is a crying need to protect the right to digital privacy.