Corporations and their right to privacy?: examining the ifs and buts

The burgeoning adoption of the Internet of Things, smartphones, and cloud-based services has led to a massive scale of data generation and consumption. The technology’s ubiquity intensifies dangers to “informational privacy”–a dimension of the right to privacy that has shaped the discourse on data governance. In modern economies where corporations are the key players in data creation, processing, storage, and outsourcing, the need for protection of corporations’ informational interests has intensified manifold. This article argues that all corporations have sensitive data, classified information, employee data, non-personal data, and algorithms that require legal protection through an enforceable right to privacy. Distinguishing between privacy and data protection, the article analyses the incoherent judicial discourse and doctrinal inconsistencies to highlight that the question of whether corporations have privacy rights is left unanswered. Through conceptual and normative arguments, it argues for recognizing the privacy of corporations in India’s evolving data protection framework.