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The Finance Bill has proposed to criminalise the illicit publication of transaction-level information provided by business entities to the customs department as such data could be misused by competing international entities and hostile countries to the disadvantage of Indian businesses, two officials aware of the development said.

There have to be legal provisions against publication of the data, which can be mined by other countries to Indias disadvantage, they said.

The Finance Bill presented in Parliament on February 1 proposed to insert Section 135AA in the Customs Act to protect import and export data submitted to customs by importers or exporters in their declarations by making the publishing of such information, unless provided by the law, as an offence.

The proposed data privacy and confidentiality provisions evoked strong responses from all quarters. On one end was Congress MP Shashi Tharoor who alleged that the government was restricting availability of data for the public, on the other was FIEO director general Ajay Sahai who told media that exporters had pitched for stringent measures to prevent commercially sensitive information being shared as they were being procured from the Customs ICEGATE and being sold for a premium, an official said.

The Indian Customs Electronic Gateway (ICEGATE) is the national portal of Indian customs under the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) that provides e-filing services to cargo carriers and other trading partners electronically.

Reacting to Tharoors tweet on this matter, the CBIC said: Honble MPs attention is invited to the clause proposed as sub-section. 135 AA (2) under which Government agencies, such as, Department of Commerce, will continue to uninterruptedly publish data as per current practice.

The proposed clause will only criminalise the illicit publication of personalised, transaction level information by private entities, which affects the competitive position of Indian businesses in international trade and compromises their data privacy, it said in a second tweet on this matter from its official handle @cbic_india on February 5.

In any case, data publication through the department of commerce will continue unhindered, the official mentioned above said. At present, the Director General of Commercial Intelligence & Statistics (DGCI&S) provides export and import data through the governments website tradestat.commerce.gov.in.

The data is aggregated and fully anonymised before publishing on the net. The data can be extracted at 8 digits, country-wise, with quantity & values of goods, imported and exported. This aggregate data is useful for associations and researchers but apparently not enough for business. They are looking for competitive intelligence and mining information of buyers, sellers, and even contemporaneous values of goods to ward-off challenges on valuation by Customs. This demand has led to a very lucrative data mining and trading market, he said.

Reportedly, there are 130 million records available for sale on the darkweb and as recently as December 2021, the Directorate General of Systems filed an FIR with Delhi police under the IT Act 2000 on the heels of missives to other ministries on improving data security of commercially sensitive customs data, he added.

Another official, who did not wish to be named, said the CBIC officers network is a closed loop and not open to the public via the internet. However, ICEGATE exchanges data with over 26 partner agencies, including commercial organisations in the private sector such as ports and airports. For the private sector, the data is immensely valuable for offering of multitude of services or for monetisation. Their approach to data security is not aligned with that of customs.

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Ban on publishing business information in government sights - Hindustan Times