A Guide to Litigating Identity Systems
29. The use of any data by the state, including the implementation of an identity
system, must be carried out against this backdrop with respect for all
fundamental human rights. The collection of data to be used in the system
and the storage of data can both independently implicate privacy rights and
involve overlapping and distinct considerations. Additionally, the particular
risks associated with identity systems – heightened danger of cybersecurity
attacks,50 identity fraud,51 and potential facilitation of mass surveillance52 –
further threaten the right to privacy. Given these risks to privacy, it is vital to
ensure courts give adequate weight to potential privacy rights violations in
their balancing of competing interests in order to prevent disproportionate or
unnecessary impacts on privacy in furtherance of the stated aims of the
systems.53
30. This section of the guide provides a variety of arguments explored by
different jurisdictions, addressing different conceptions of privacy rights and
balancing the importance of privacy rights with proposed benefits of identity
systems. Advocates and human rights defenders should utilise this section of
the guide to raise identity systems’ impacts on privacy rights and challenge
the systems under the proportionality frameworks used by courts to analyse
the systems.
50
See Madhewoo, 2015 SCJ 177 at 30.
51
See Opinion of Justice Sykes, ¶ 54.
52
Aadhaar Judgment, ¶ 247 of dissent.
53
See Aadhaar Judgment, ¶ 254 of dissent.
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