Justice K.S.Puttaswamy(Retd) vs Union Of India on 26 September, 2018 593. The concept of invasion of privacy is not the early conventional thought process of poking ones nose in another person's affairs. It is not so simplistic. In today's world, privacy is a limit on the Government's power as well as the power of private sector entities. [ Daniel Solove, 10 Reasons Why Privacy Matters published on 20-1-2014 <https://www.teachprivacy.com/10-reasons-privacymatters/>.] 594. George Orwell created a fictional State in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Today, it can be a reality. The technological development today can enable not only the State, but also big corporations and private entities to be the big brother. xx xx xx 629. The right of an individual to exercise control over his personal data and to be able to control his/her own life would also encompass his right to control his existence on the internet. Needless to say that this would not be an absolute right. The existence of such a right does not imply that a criminal can obliterate his past, but that there are variant degrees of mistakes, small and big, and it cannot be said that a person should be profiled to the nth extent for all and sundry to know. 630. A high school teacher was fired after posting on her Facebook page that she was so not looking forward to another [school] year since the school district's residents were arrogant and snobby. A flight attendant was fired for posting suggestive photos of herself in the company's uniform. [ Patricia Sánchez Abril, Blurred Boundaries: Social Media Privacy and the Twenty-First-Century Employee, 49 Am Bus LJ 63 at p. 69 (2012).] In the pre- digital era, such incidents would have never occurred. People could then make mistakes and embarrass themselves, with the comfort that the information will be typically forgotten over time. 631. The impact of the digital age results in information on the internet being permanent. Humans forget, but the internet does not forget and does not let humans forget. Any endeavour to remove information from the internet does not result in its absolute obliteration. The footprints remain. It is thus, said that in the digital world preservation is the norm and forgetting a struggle [ Ravi Antani, THE RESISTANCE OF MEMORY : COULD THE EUROPEAN UNION'S RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN EXIST IN THE UNITED STATES?, 30 Berkeley Tech LJ 1173 (2015).] . 632. The technology results almost in a sort of a permanent storage in some way or the other making it difficult to begin life again giving up past mistakes. People are not static, they change and grow through their lives. They evolve. They make mistakes. But they are entitled to re-invent themselves and reform and correct their mistakes. It is privacy which nurtures this ability and removes the shackles of unadvisable things which may have been done in the past. 633. Children around the world create perpetual digital footprints on social network websites on a 24/7 basis as they learn their ABCs: Apple, Bluetooth and chat followed by download, e-mail, Facebook, Google, Hotmail and Instagram. [ Michael L. Rustad, SannaKulevska, Reconceptualizing the right to be forgotten to enable transatlantic data flow, (2015) 28 Harv JL & Tech 349.] They should not be subjected to the consequences of their childish mistakes and naivety, their entire life. Indian Kanoon - http://indiankanoon.org/doc/127517806/ 80