The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, 2022 — tabled by the Home Ministry in the lower house of the Parliament on March 28 — has yet again brought the debate of balancing between an individual's fundamental right to privacy and the state's authoritative control over the matters of public order. The Bill appears to be more inclined towards state control vis-à-vis individual rights. The objectives of the Bill which replaces the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920, are indeed pertinent at this juncture but the legislation leaves a vast grey that is prone to misuse. The Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920, had provisions for collecting fingerprints and footprints of convicts. These provisions, however, don't fit into the present-day circumstances wherein technology has gone a notch higher. The new Bill excessively widens the range of details that can be collected during an investigation — to the point where it can safely be termed as being highly intrusive of bodily and behavioural privacy. The Bill allows officers or even head constable rank to collect palm-print impressions, iris and retina scans, behavioural attributes like signature and handwriting, and biological samples such as blood, semen, hair, and swabs. Apart from incorporating all convicts and arrestees, the new bill also extends its ambit to include persons charged under preventive detention laws like UAPA, MISA etc. This aspect is highly problematic as some of the preventive detention laws are already criticised for being "draconian", and the new Bill, after becoming law, will add more layers of ambiguities to the widely 'misused' laws. Furthermore, the dropping of the ground of "offence punishable with at least one year of rigorous imprisonment" — present in the 1920 Act — could lead to undue harassment of even mild offenders who may just have committed petty crimes like travelling without a train ticket, theft etc. as they come, by definition, under the subject of the new legislation. A clear line is missing in the legislation that would separate the genuine offenders whose data may be required from the ones who may simply fall into the trap. The government cannot simply be so reckless in dealing with public data, particularly those dealing with the privacy of individuals. It is not just about the collection of people's (as the subjects extend beyond convicts) private data but also about retention of the same for 75 years which, the Congress MP Manish Tewari says, violates the individual's Right to be Forgotten — highlighted under 'KS Puttaswamy versus Union of India'. Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, 2022, gives overreaching powers to the National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB) in terms of "storing and destroying the details about specified persons, processing the details with relevant criminal records, and disseminating the details to law enforcement agencies". These overreaching provisions of the Bill make little sense in absence of the much-needed national data protection framework and, in fact, do "more harm than good". Though privacy is the paramount concern, the Bill is facing criticism on several other counts as well. It violates an accused person's right against self-incrimination. Article 20 (3) of the Indian Constitution allows an accused person to abstain from making statements and disclosures that could lead to her/his incrimination. Interestingly, by stating that the refusal to give details by the person in question will be deemed as an offence under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, 2022 puts the onus of proving guilt onto the accused — which should rather be state's responsibility! The broader question is that of disruption in the power-sharing arrangements prescribed under the Indian federal structure. While the 1920 Act empowered only the state governments — Police being a state subject — to make rules towards the implementation of the law, the 2020 Bill seemingly extends the power to the Central government as well. This goes against the grain of federalism. In sum, an upgrade of the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920, is pertinent in wake of the technological improvement the world has gone through but it has to be done in a manner that leaves fewer legal ambiguities and reduces the scope of misuse of power by state forces. Any legislation in 21st-century India is doomed to fail if it goes against the basic tenets of individual freedom and rights.