We are anonymous, we are legion

India internet: clean-up or censorship?

praskrishna — 2012-01-16T11:17:11Z

Is India going the way of China? Not when it comes to development indicators. Or enhanced infrastructure. Or economic power. But in another category at which Beijing excels: web censorship.

That was the implication of a ruling on Thursday from Justice Suresh Kait, of the Delhi High Court, who told lawyers for Facebook India and Google India that unless they develop mechanisms to regulate “offensive and objectionable” material on their web sites, India is prepared to take drastic measures, according to the Hindustan Times. “Like China, we will block all such websites,” Kalit declared.

According to the IBN news channel, the government seems to be moving to make good on those threats:

Government sources said on Friday that the Delhi High Court was likely to issue sanctions to prosecute social networking sites Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo India in the ongoing spat between the companies and the Government of India over content regulation.

“Prosecution for some of the non-bailable offences requires prior sanction of the government, which has been sought and it is likely to be granted,” the sources said.

[…]

Summons are to be sent to the companies through the Ministry of External Affairs directing their heads to appear before court on March 13, which is when the next hearing will take place. The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology will file its affidavit by this evening.

Clearly there’s trouble in “the world’s largest democracy”.

Kalit’s pronouncement is the latest turn in a story that broke last month, when the New York Times reported that telecoms minister Kapil Sibal had met with executives from Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft to discuss the pre-emptive removal of “offensive material” – including, it seems, web pages that had criticized the leader of his party, Sonia Gandhi.

As beyondbrics reported, Sibal then gave a combative press conference where he said: “I believe that no reasonable person aware of the sensibilities of large sections of communities in this country and aware of community standards as they are applicable in India would wish to see this content in the public domain,” referring to “offensive material” he had shown some reporters prior to the conference.

He added, repeatedly, that the government did not believe in censorship.

Apparently, Kalit didn’t get the memo.

Lawyers for the internet giants appeared before the judge to request the dismissal of a criminal complaint filed by a private citizen in a lower court under sections of the Indian law that cover “sale of obscene books etc”, “sale of obscene objects to young person etc” and “criminal conspiracy”. The judge declined.

“The magistrate of the trial court had observed that the material submitted by the complainant contained obscene pictures and derogatory articles pertaining to various Hindu gods, Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ”, IBN reported.

According to the Hindustan Times:

On behalf of Google India, senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi said it was humanly not possible to filter or monitor the postings of obscene, objectionable and defamatory material. “Billions of people across the globe, post their articles on the website. Yes, they may be defamatory, obscene but cannot be checked,” he said.

A Google spokesperson issued a statement last night, saying, “We did file a petition before the Delhi High Court. The Court has now issued a notice to the petitioner. We can’t comment at this stage.”

Today, the company issued a clarification:

Today the Court has merely directed the petitioner to serve the Court order to the overseas entities at their respective addresses and has adjourned the matter to March 13th.

Last month, a lower court had ordered the sites to remove all “anti-social” or “anti-relgious” content by February 6.

As Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society, told beyondbrics last month, it’s difficult to establish exactly what is anti-religious: for example, the Hindu profession of belief in multiple gods is blasphemous to Muslims, Christians and Jews.

A lower court had directed the central government to take “immediate appropriate steps” and file a report by January 13.

It has not been released yet, but later on Friday you can Google it. Take the opportunity – if India goes the way of China, it might prove more difficult in future.

This blog post by Neil Munshi was published in beyondbrics on 13 January 2012

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/clean-up-or-censorship

India High Court: No Takedown Requests On Social Sites Without Court, Gov't Order

praskrishna — 2015-04-03T06:18:52Z

Indian police will no longer be able to threaten Internet users and online intermediaries with jail merely on the basis of a complaint that they have posted “offensive” posts online.

The blog post by Madhur Singh was published in Bloomberg BNA on March 25, 2015. Geetha Hariharan gave her inputs.

Following a landmark judgment by the Supreme Court of India March 24, law enforcement agencies will be able to take action in such cases only after an order has been obtained from a court or the government (Singhal v.Union of India, India Sup. Ct., 3/24/15).

The court struck down in its entirety Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which authorized criminal penalties for sending “offensive” messages through electronic communication services. Opponents of the measure said the section defined “offensive” very vaguely and broadly, and that cases of arrest under the section frequently made headlines.

Freedom of speech activists and Internet-based businesses welcomed the judgment as a boost for civil liberties, freedom of speech and a conducive business environment for an entire gamut of online businesses.

The judgment is good news for intermediaries such as Facebook Inc. and the India-based review site MouthShut.com, both of which have been repeatedly inundated with takedown notices based on complaints against “offensive” posts.

Offensive Posts Were Actionable Under Section 66A

Section 66A, added to the Information Technology Act of 2000 through an amendment in February 2009, prescribed imprisonment of up to three years and a fine for anyone who sends via a computer resource or communication device:

(a) any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character;
(b) any information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will, persistently by making use of such computer resource or a communication device; or
(c) any electronic mail or electronic mail message for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or recipient about the origin of such messages.

A supporting Section 79(3)(b) stated that “upon receiving actual knowledge, or on being notified by the appropriate government or its agency that any information, data or communication link residing in or connected to a computer resource controlled by the intermediary is being used to commit the unlawful act,” the intermediary would have to “expeditiously remove or disable access to that material or that resource.”

Together, these sections put ordinary Internet users at risk for arrest for simply posting online and obligated intermediaries such as Twitter Inc., Facebook, MouthShut.com and others to take down content simply pursuant to a complaint.

Earlier this month, Facebook revealed statistics indicating that India is second on its global list of governments demanding takedowns.

Court Removes Intermediaries' Discretion

Shwetasree Majumder, partner at Fidus Law Chambers, told Bloomberg BNA March 25 that after this decision, any blocking of content can now only take place via a reasoned order after complying with several procedural safeguards, including a hearing to the originator and intermediary either by the designated
officer or pursuant to an order passed by a competent court.

“So intermediaries like Google, Facebook etc. are no longer required to judge as to whether the take down notices received by them contain legitimate requests or not,” she wrote in an e-mail. “As an acknowledgement that a true intermediary should not concern itself with the merits of the content posted by third parties, the court takes away the intermediary's discretion as to what content must remain and what must go.”

Geetha Hariharan, program officer at the Centre for Internet and Society, told Bloomberg BNA that after “reading down” Section 79, the Supreme Court “has relieved the intermediary of its responsibility to judge the lawfulness of content. Now, the intermediary will lose immunity under Section 79(3)(b) (and be liable
to prosecution or penalty) only if it does not take content down after receiving ‘actual knowledge of a court order or government notification' requiring takedown of content.”

Prior to the judgment, an intermediary was required to judge whether a takedown notice concerned unlawful content on its website, which would constitute “actual knowledge” under the section. If the intermediary made an affirmative determination, it was required to take the content down or lose immunity under Section 79(3)(b).

Supreme Court Strikes Down 66A

Momentum against Section 66A built up over the last three years, particularly after law student Shreya Singhal filed a challenge in the Supreme Court after two Mumbai women were arrested and put in jail for 10 days in 2012 for Facebook posts against a shutdown of Mumbai city following a politician's death.

A Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Jasti Chelameswar and Rohinton F. Nariman heard ten such cases together, and ruled March 24 that Section 66A was unconstitutional as it directly affected the right of the public to know. Holding that Section 66A was “open ended, undefined, and vague” so that “virtually any opinion on any subject would be covered by it, as any serious opinion dissenting with the mores of the day would be caught within its net,” the court struck it down in its entirety.

The court said that Rule 3(4) of the Intermediaries (Guidelines) Rules, 2011, which pertains to an intermediary disabling access to material that is “known” to be violative of Rule 3(2), needed to be read down in the same manner as Section 79(3)(b).

The court, however, upheld Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, which gives the government the power to block web content if doing so is in the interest of the sovereignty, integrity or security of India.

Impact on Intermediary Liability

Overall, Majumder said that intermediary liability now stands significantly watered down. One particular case this might impact is the currently pending Super Cassettes India Ltd. v MySpace Inc. case before the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, which is considering the validity of the high threshold of intermediary liability prescribed by a single judge in copyright infringement cases.

Hariharan wrote in an e-mail that while intermediaries such as Internet service providers (ISPs) or content hosts may “choose” to take down content when they receive a private takedown notice, they don't “need” to do so to remain immune under Section 79(3)(b) or Rule 3(4) of the Intermediaries Guidelines.

“This reduces uncertainty in intermediary liability in India. It will also hopefully keep intermediaries from taking down content in an overbroad manner to escape liability,” Hariharan said, adding that the government nevertheless continues to have the ability to criminalize online acts. For instance, Sections 66B
to 67B of the IT Act define and criminalize different online conduct. Additionally, sections of the Indian Penal Code that criminalize speech acts (e.g., Sections 295A and 153A for incitement; Section 292 for obscenity) have also been applied to online acts in the past.

The Internet & Mobile Association of India said in a statement on its website March 24 that the judgment will mark a new phase for the growth and evolution of the Internet in India. While Internet users will no longer fear illegal censorship or harassment, it said that “online businesses, ranging from established international companies to small Indian startups, will be able to take advantage of a more conducive business environment.”

The IAMAI added that the judgment will be especially helpful to smaller companies such as Mouthshut.com that will “now not be harassed by the frivolous and mal-intentioned notices of take down.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-bna-march-25-2015-madhur-singh-india-high-court-no-takedown-requests-on-social-sites-without-court-govt-order

India for UN body to resolve internet governance issues

praskrishna — 2013-12-26T08:51:05Z

Multi-stakeholder or multi-lateral - two words encapsulating diametrically opposite views on internet governance stands at the heart of a raging debate across the globe.

The article by Kim Arora was published in the Times of India on December 5, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

At the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation (WGEC) meeting in Geneva last month, India suggested forming a multi-lateral UN body to co-ordinate on internet governance issues. And several activists feel that is not the right way forward.

Multi-stakeholder control over the world wide web means parties other than governments, which include the tech community, academia, businesses and civil society. In a multi-lateral arrangement, only the governments will be the decision-makers and every other stakeholder barring the state, is relegated to a purely advisory role. Simply put, the choice is between total state control over the internet or a more democratic set-up where other sections of society are also represented.

Civil society and businesses are concerned that being relegated to an advisory role rather than a decision-making one could lead to disregarding or dumping their inputs.

"Everyone must have a seat at the table," says Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). "If you are designing a new model, it is important that it is as inclusive as possible. That will create better decisions. It will also discourage back-door bargaining between governments," says Anja Kovacs of the Internet Democracy Project.

The internet architecture has always been controlled by the US. The demand for a more democratised set-up, where other countries also have a voice, started in early 2000s. In 2005, a consensus document, Tunis Agenda, had been signed under the aegis of the UN. It laid out much of the terms of the debate around internet governance, including the focus on enhanced cooperation and the need for a multi-stakeholder model.

In 2011, India put forward a detailed proposal for a multi-lateral UN body that was widely criticised by activists and business bodies at home. In Geneva this November, India's answer to a question on implementing "enhanced cooperation" in a WGEC questionnaire, went like this: "A suitable multilateral, transparent and democratic mechanism must be created where governments, on an equal footing, may carry out their roles and responsibilities in international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet and public policy issues pertaining to coordination and management of critical Internet resources, in consultation with all other stakeholders."

Ajay Kumar of the Department of Electronics and Communication Technology (DeitY), was a part of the delegation representing India at Geneva. The DeitY falls under the union ministry of communication and information technology. Kumar told TOI, that while there is a relook at the 2011 proposal, India has been following the Tunis Agenda when it comes to enhanced cooperation between different countries and other stakeholders.

Nonetheless, Parminder Jeet Singh of the NGO IT for Change has supported the government position at the WGEC meeting. The two other civil society bodies from India at Geneva wanted a multi-stakeholder model. Singh feels that the proposal may have an important role to play at a later stage when "real political talk shapes up". "We don't agree that a Google or an IT for Change should vote in the decision-making about actual public policies. We understand the fear (behind such an arrangement) but we prefer that public policy decisions at global level remain with governments as they are legitimate representatives of the people," he says.

However, Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Center for Internet and Society, warns against the governmental tendency to centralize and for being opaque. He also feels that a single model, whether multilateral or multi-stakeholder, will not work. Every model must change with every issue being brought to the table, he says. "For instance, something like controlling child pornography, will need one kind of model to deal with. The same won't work when dealing with hate speech," Abraham points out.

Activists are hoping that the Brazil global multi-stakeholder meeting in April next year will take the issue of democratised internet governance forward.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-december-5-2013-kim-arora-india-for-un-body-to-resolve-internet-governance-issues

India for inclusive internet governance

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T10:36:52Z

India wants "core internet infrastructure" to be part of an international legal system that would accommodate governments, civil society and other stakeholders. In typical Indian diplomatic style, its position can be interpreted to mean everything and nothing.

The article by Indrani Bagchi published in the Times of India on April 25, 2014 quotes Sunil Abraham.

An MEA team, led by joint secretary Vinay Kwatra, told Net Mundial (forum for internet governance) in Brazil on Thursday, "The elements of India's approach on internet governance respond to its growing complexity and rests in supporting the dynamism, security and openness of a single and unfragmented cyberspace. We also support innovation and robust private sector investment to augment internet's continuing growth and evolution."

The Indian position is essentially an MEA position, because there has been little prior inter-agency consultation in the government. In fact, while the MEA had decided upon its team almost a month ago, the department of information technology woke up only last week. It was on Friday that the nodal ministry for IT-related issues even agreed to send a team to Brazil on Monday- the same team that the MEA was sending. If nothing else, sources said, this only highlighted the lack of seriousness within the Indian system.

Kwatra said internet should have a democratic governing system involving everyone, which would essentially mean creating a parallel international system. While India does not want the status quo to continue, there is no clarity whether it favours a multilateral or a multi-stakeholder system. India, like China, wants a strong state presence in the decision-making process of internet governance because "it is used for transactions of core economic, civil and defence assets at national level and in the process, countries are placing their core national security interests in this medium". On the other hand, it wants unfettered access to knowledge and technology as a nation-building and governance tool.

Additionally, India wants non-governmental stakeholders to be properly audited and a "clear delineation of principles governing their participation, including their accountability, representativeness, transparency and inclusiveness". There is a crying need for India to clearly define the future it expects to thrive in.

Sunil Abhraham of Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society says India should take the lead in defining new internet rules, keeping its future in mind. "We could use patent pools and compulsory licensing to provide affordable and innovative digital hardware to the developing world. This would ensure that rights-holders, innovators, manufactures, consumers and government would all benefit ... We could explore flat-fee licensing models like a broadband copyright cess or levy to ensure that users get content at affordable rates and rights-holders get some royalty from all internet users in India. This will go a long way in undermining the copyright enforcement-based censorship regime that has been established by the US. We could enact a world-class privacy law and establish an independent, autonomous and proactive privacy commissioner who will keep both private and state actors on a short lease. We need a scientific, targeted surveillance regime that is in compliance with human rights principles. This will make India simultaneously an IP and privacy haven and thereby attract huge investment from the private sector, and also earn the goodwill of the global civil society and independent media."

This is more than the Indian government has thought of.

While no binding decisions are expected from Brazil this week, the high profile event is expected to trigger a high-level debate on possible reforms. India, say officials, needs to come up with concrete proposals. This is imperative after the US made two crucial decisions on internet governance this year. In March the US announced that by September 2015 it would give up oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based non-profit group, that assigns domain names. But the US is clear it will not hand over the levers to any organization that can be controlled by any other country. This week, the US' FCC dealt a body blow to the concept of "net neutrality" (which essentially functions on the premise that access to the internet is the same for everyone) by allowing companies like Disney and Google to pay for premium internet speeds.

Countries like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia (may be even Iran) seek to control net access for their citizens as a measure of political control. Second, cyber offensive by countries which are ramping up capacity in these fields could take over internet governance structures if they are not crafted carefully enough. If the US is relinquishing control over ICANN, the next global battle is likely to be over who takes over that mantle. This makes it important to get net governance right. At least China has a plan: It wants the UN to take control. India wants a bit of everything, without actually giving it a shape, making it virtually impossible to shape the debate.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-april-25-indrani-bagchi-india-for-inclusive-internet-governance

INDIA Fears of Privacy Loss Pursue Ambitious ID Project

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:00:44Z

Fears about loss of privacy are being voiced as India gears up to launch an ambitious scheme to biometrically identify and number each of its 1.2 billion inhabitants.

In September, officials from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), armed with fingerprinting machines, iris scanners and cameras hooked to laptops, will fan out across the towns and villages of southern Andhra Pradesh state in the first phase of the project whose aim is to give every Indian a lifelong Unique ID (UID) number.

"The UID is soft infrastructure, much like mobile telephony, important to connect individuals to the broader economy," explains Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the UIDAI and listed in 2009 by Time magazine as among the world's 100 most influential people.

Nilekani is a co-founder of the influential National Association of Software and Services Companies and, before this assignment, chief of Infosys Technologies, flagship of India's information technology (IT) sector.

According to Nilekani, the UID will most benefit India's poor who, because they lack identity documentation, are ignored by service providers.

"The UID number, with its 'anytime, anywhere' biometric authentication, addresses the problem of trust," argues Nilekani.

But a group of prominent civil society organisations are running a Campaign For No-UID, explaining that it is a "deeply undemocratic and expensive exercise" that is "fraught with unforeseen consequences."

Participants in the campaign include well-known human rights organisations such as the Alternative Law Forum, Citizen Action Forum, People's Union for Civil Liberties, Indian Social Action Forum, and the Centre for Internet and Society.

A meeting was organised by the campaigners in New Delhi on Aug. 25 where speakers ridiculed the idea of a 12-digit number, and said it is unlikely to rectify, for example, the massive corruption in the public distribution system that is supposed to provide food to poor families.

J.T. D'Souza, an IT expert, asserted at the meeting that the use of biometrics on such a massive scale has never been attempted before and is bound to be riddled with costly glitches.

Other speakers raised issues of security and the possibility of hackers getting at databases and passing on information to commercial outfits, intelligence agencies or even criminal gangs.

In talks and television interviews, Nilekani has maintained that the benefits of the UID project far outweigh its risks. "It's worth taking on the project and trying to mitigate the risks so that we get the outcomes we want," he told the CNN-IBN television channel in an interview.

But the possibility of religious profiling by state governments or misuse by caste lobbies is real. This is because the central government has decided to include caste as a category in the UID questionnaire to be filled out by applicants.

Because identity is already a potent issue and the trigger for frequent identity-related conflict – such as the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat that left 2,000 people dead – any exercise that enhances identification is fraught.

Usha Ramanathan, a prominent legal expert who is attached to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in the national capital, does not buy the UIDAI's assurances.

At the Aug. 25 meeting, Ramanthan said that while enrolling with the UIDAI may be voluntary, other agencies and service providers might require a UID number in order to transact business. Indeed, the UIDAI has already signed agreements with banks, state governments and hospital chains which will allow them to ask customers for UIDs.

Ramanathan said that, taken to its logical limit, the UID project will make it impossible, in a couple of years, for an ordinary citizen to undertake a simple task such as travelling within the country without a UID number.

The UIDAI will work with the National Population Register (NPR) which draws its powers from the Citizenship Rules of 2003 and provides for penalties if information is withheld.

And as a government website says: "Certain information collected under the NPR will be published in the local areas for public scrutiny and invitation of objections." Seeking to allay privacy fears, the website goes on to explain that this is merely "in the nature of the electoral roll or the telephone directory."

But things begin to look ominous when seen in the context of the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), the setting up of which home minister P. Chidambaram announced in February as part of his response to a major terrorist attack.

Chidambaram said NATGRID would tap into 21 sets of databases that will be networked to achieve "quick, seamless and secure access to desired information for intelligence and enforcement agencies."

He added that NATGRID will "identify those who must be watched, investigated, disabled and neutralised."

"Internationally only a few countries have provided national ID cards because of the unsettled debate on privacy and civil liberties," says Prof. R. Ramakumar at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. He added that several countries have had to withdraw ID card schemes or drop biometric aspects because of public opposition.

Nilekani maintains that the main purpose of the UID project is to empower the vast numbers of excluded Indians. "For the poor this is a huge benefit because they have no identities, no birth certificates, degree certificates, driver's licences, passports or even addresses." (END/2010)

Read the original news in IPS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-fears-of-privacy-loss

India facial recognition: How effective will it be?

Admin — 2019-11-15T00:42:35Z

India is trying to build what could be the world's largest facial recognition system.

New Delhi says the system could help fight crime and find missing children.

The technology has already been launched at a few Indian airports.

Police in New Delhi says it has identified nearly 3,000 missing children during a trial period last year.

But not everyone is convinced.

Internet freedom advocates say there is little information about where and what the system will be used for and how data will be stored.

The use of facial recognition software is already common in places like China.

But there are questions about how effective it is, with one British study revealing that the technology could be highly inaccurate.

Pranesh Prakash joins Al Jazeera from Bengaluru in India. He is a fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society but is talking to us in a personal capacity

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/al-jazeera-video-november-8-2019-india-facial-recognition

India faces Twitter backlash over Internet clampdown

praskrishna — 2012-08-28T09:56:11Z

The government faced an angry backlash from Twitter users on Thursday after ordering Internet service providers to block about 20 accounts that officials said had spread scare-mongering material that threatened national security.

Post published in INDOlink, Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The backlash came as New Delhi turned up the heat on Twitter, threatening "appropriate and suitable action" if it failed to remove the accounts as soon as possible. Several newspapers said this could mean a total ban on access to Twitter in India but government officials would not confirm to Reuters that such a drastic step was being considered.

There was no immediate response from Twitter, which does not have an office in India. There are about 16 million Twitter users in the country.

The government has found itself on the defensive this week over what critics see as a clumsy clampdown on social media websites - including Google, YouTube and Facebook - that has raised questions about freedom of information in the world's largest democracy.

"Dear GOI (Government of India), Keep your Hands Off My Internet. Else face protest" tweeted one user, @Old_Monk60.

India blocked access to more than 300 Web pages after threatening mobile phone text messages and doctored website images fuelled rumours that Muslims, a large minority in the predominantly Hindu country, were planning revenge attacks for violence in Assam, where 80 people have been killed and 300,000 have been displaced since July.

Fearing for their lives, tens of thousands of migrants fled Mumbai, Bangalore and other cities last week. The exodus highlighted underlying tensions in a country with a history of ethnic and religious violence.

According to documents obtained by Reuters, the government has targeted Indian journalists, Britain's Daily Telegraph, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Al Jazeera television in its clampdown on Internet postings it says could inflame communal tensions.

The directives to Internet service providers listed dozens of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages. A random sampling of the YouTube postings revealed genuine news footage spliced together with fear-mongering propaganda.

INDIAN JOURNALISTS TARGETED

The government says Google and Facebook have largely cooperated while Twitter has been much slower to respond.

"Every company, whether it's an entertainment company, or a construction company, or a social media company, has to operate within the laws of the given country," said Sachin Pilot, minister of state in the Ministry of Communications.

Twitter has been instructed to remove 28 pages containing "objectionable content", an interior ministry official said.

"If they do not remove the pages, the Indian government will take appropriate and suitable action," he added.

The government has ordered Internet service providers to block the Twitter accounts of veteran journalist Kanchan Gupta and television anchor Shiv Aroor. Some appeared to have begun complying with the order on Thursday as Twitter users reported difficulties in accessing their pages.

"It is a political decision, because of my criticism of the government," said Gupta, who was an official in the previous government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

The government's actions triggered a storm of criticism from Twitter users, with the hashtags #Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks among the top trending topics on Twitter in India on Thursday. Some compared the situation with the state of emergency imposed by the government in 1975, when some journalists were jailed.

The Centre for Internet and Society, which analysed the 300 banning orders, found that they contained "numerous mistakes and inconsistencies". Some of the banned websites belonged to people trying to debunk the rumours, for example, it said.

"This isn't about political censorship. This is about the government not knowing how to do online regulation properly," said CIS programme manager Pranesh Prakash.

The parliament last year passed a law that obliges Internet companies to remove a range of objectionable content when requested to do so, a move criticised at the time by rights groups and social media companies.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-indolink-com-india-faces-twitter-backlash

India faces Twitter backlash over Internet clampdown

praskrishna — 2012-08-27T06:56:37Z

The Indian government faced an angry backlash from Twitter users on Thursday after ordering Internet service providers to block about 20 accounts that officials said had spread scare-mongering material that threatened national security.

Written by Devidutta Tripathy and Satarupa Bhattacharjya, this post was published in Reuters on August 24, 2012. (Additional reporting by Ross Colvin, Annie Banerji and David Lalmalsawma and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Ross Colvin; Editing by John Chalmers, Andrew Osborn, Gary Hill). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The backlash came as New Delhi turned up the heat on Twitter, threatening "appropriate and suitable action" if it failed to remove the accounts as soon as possible. Several Indian newspapers said this could mean a total ban on access to Twitter in India but government officials would not confirm to Reuters that such a drastic step was being considered.

Twitter, which does not have an office in India, declined to comment. There are about 16 million Twitter users in the South Asian country.

"Dear GOI (Government of India), Keep your Hands Off My Internet. Else face protest" tweeted one user, @Old_Monk60.

India blocked access to more than 300 Web pages after threatening mobile phone text messages and doctored website images fuelled rumors that Muslims, a large minority in the predominantly Hindu country, were planning revenge attacks for violence in the northeastern state of Assam, where 80 people have been killed and 300,000 have been displaced since July.

In Washington, the State Department urged New Delhi to balance its security push with respect for basic rights including freedom of speech.

"As the Indian government seeks to preserve security we are urging them also to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Nuland said Washington stood ready to consult with U.S. companies as they discuss the issue with the Indian government, although it was not now directly involved.

"The unique characteristics of the online environment need to be respected even as they work through whether there are things these companies can do to help calm the environment," she said.

Indian Journalists Targeted

The government says Google and Facebook have largely cooperated while Twitter has been much slower to respond.

Twitter has been instructed to remove 28 pages containing "objectionable content," an interior ministry official said.

"If they do not remove the pages, the Indian government will take appropriate and suitable action," he added.

"It is a political decision, because of my criticism of the government," said Gupta, who was an official in the previous government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Centre for Internet and Society, which analyzed the 300 banning orders, found that they contained "numerous mistakes and inconsistencies." Some of the banned websites belonged to people trying to debunk the rumors, for example, it said.

"This isn't about political censorship. This is about the government not knowing how to do online regulation properly," said CIS program manager Pranesh Prakash.

India's parliament last year passed a law that obliges Internet companies to remove a range of objectionable content when requested to do so, a move criticized at the time by rights groups and social media companies.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/in-reuters-com-devidutta-tripathy-satarupa-bhattacharjya-aug-24-2012-india-faces-twitter-backlash

India entering the Minority Report age?

praskrishna — 2011-12-10T06:40:57Z

Indian government efforts to block offensive material from the Internet have prompted a storm of online ridicule along with warnings of the risk to India's image as a bastion of free speech.

Communications Minister Kapil Sibal pledged a crackdown on “unacceptable” online content, saying Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo! and Facebook had ignored India's demands to screen images and data before they are uploaded.

“We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue,” Sibal told reporters this week, without detailing what steps might be taken.

His comments provoked anger and derision among Indian Internet users, while experts raised doubts about the practicalities of enforcing any directive and others questioned the government's motives.

Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, said it would be “impractical on the level of scale and on the level of the objective test”.

“What's offensive for someone might be completely banal to somebody else,” he told AFP.

Any ham-fisted government crackdown would “have a high impact on our credibility as a democracy” and risk alienating India's growing online community, Abraham said.

“We should be doing almost everything to promote the take-up of the Internet. It's almost tragic that we're pushing in the opposite direction,” he added.

India, the world's largest democracy, has more than 110 million Internet users out of a population of 1.2 billion, with predictions that 600 million people will be online in the next five years.

#KapilSibal has this week become one of the most trending topics among Indian users of the micro-blogging site Twitter, with many resorting to humour to mock the minister.

Some likened his comments to attempts by Pakistan's telecoms regulator last month to ban text messages containing nearly 1,700 words it deemed “obscene”, which was shelved after outrage from users and campaigners.

The satirical Indian web site fakingnews.com compared Sibal's plans to the futuristic Hollywood film “Minority Report”, in which criminals are arrested before committing their crimes.

It also carried a spoof news article headlined: “All Facebook posts to have 'Kapil Sibal likes this' by default”.

The mainstream media has been generally critical of Sibal as well, warning the government that it could not be seen to over-step the boundaries protecting India's treasured democratic values.

“Pre-screening of content amounts to unacceptable censorship,” the Business Standard said in an editorial.

There was even a mild expression of concern from Washington where US State Department spokesman Mark Toner was asked about the Indian government's stance.

“We are concerned about any effort to curtail freedom of expression on the Internet,” Toner said, while carefully avoiding any direct criticism of Sibal's proposals.

Sibal rejected any suggestion of an assault on free speech, saying the government had pleaded for self-regulation by companies such as Google to filter out deeply “insulting” material.

He highlighted examples of faked pictures of naked politicians, including Congress Party head Sonia Gandhi, and other images and social network pages that he said could inflame religious tensions.

India has in the past moved to block the publication of books and other material seen as disrespectful to Gandhi, or other members of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has dominated India's political life since independence.

Vijay Mukhi, a Mumbai-based freelance consultant who writes on Internet security, said Sibal had shown a fundamental lack of understanding about technology and was badly-advised.

He also saw in the reaction to the proposals a sign of how the Internet is undermining traditional unquestioning respect and deference towards elders and authority figures.

“Most of us in India are very sensitive about what people say. The problem also is that whilst the Internet is there, you have to have a thick hide,” said Mukhi.

“Politicians have got to create a second, third or fourth skin to be immune to the criticism that they get.”

New Delhi has been accused before of censorship after demanding that BlackBerry makers Research In Motion give Indian security services access to encrypted messaging and email services.

Analysts agreed that under certain circumstances, particularly national security, pre- or post-censorship was acceptable, as India was the frequent target of extremists.

Abraham, though, said any ban on data and images on decency grounds without a prior complaint was doomed to fail and likely to be contrary to the constitutional right of freedom of expression if challenged in court. - Sapa-AFP

The blog post by Phil Hazlewood was published in ioL scitech. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this. Read the original here

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India encryption policy draft faces backlash

praskrishna — 2015-09-22T01:59:44Z

The department of information technology is facing a backlash from industry experts, Internet watchers and netizens on its draft of the National Encryption Policy that it recently made public.

The article by Moulishree Srivastava was published in Livemint on September 22, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

While the draft policy aims to enable a secure environment for both information and transactions in cyberspace for individuals, businesses and government, experts are concerned over privacy and outdated standards prescribed in the policy, among other things.

The policy puts the onus to produce encrypted information when demanded by government agencies on Indian citizens as well as on all the online service providers including instant messaging and e-commerce services that use encryption technology (to convert plain information to an unreadable format).

The department put the policy online late last week and it came on the radar of industry watchers and experts over the weekend. The policy is open for comments from the public till 16 October.

The policy, in its current form, is poorly drafted and the measures listed in it make Indian information systems vulnerable to cyber attacks, experts say.

For instance, the policy has mandated the use of specific standards and algorithms for encryption.

Encryption can be compared to the process of translating information in one language into a foreign language.

“Specifying certain algorithms to be used for encryption, and restricting the key sizes is same as saying that you are only allowed to communicate using a language from a given set of government-specified languages and no other language can be used,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society.

However, the ones mentioned in the draft policy are outdated and unsafe to use, experts say. Another thing that weakens the security considerably is the req-uirement for businesses and citizens to keep the information (that was encrypted and sent over) for 90 days, in case law en-forcement agencies demand it. But that also means that for those 90 days, cyber criminals, too, can access it, warn experts.

Another big gap in the policy is that it leaves out “sensitive departments/agencies of the government designated for performing sensitive and strategic roles”, said Prakash.

“When the policy states its mission to be the enhancing of confidentiality of information and of security of critical networks by laying out information security best practices, how does it make any sense to keep sensitive or strategic government department and agencies outside its purview?” he asked. “After all, these are the organizations that most need to be kept secure to enhance national cybersecurity.”

The draft is also ambiguous on which online services—be it shopping online or accessing email—people can use (in compliance with the law) and which online service providers will have to be registered with the government.

The policy states that “service providers located within and outside India, using encryption technology for providing any type of services in India, must enter into an agreement with the government for providing such services in India”. Users can only use the services that are registered with the government.

“This is the first time when users are actually being told what are the things they can and cannot do,” said Prakash.

“The government must take note that the knowledge and expertise of common citizens may be inadequate to understand the nuances of encryption,” said cyber law expert Na Vijayashankar on his blog. “For example, if a citizen uses a service available on the Internet which uses, say, a higher level of encryption than what is appro-ved, then this policy may make him liable for the violation.”

The problem is enhanced because all online services use some encryption technology. This means that practically all online activity will fall under this new policy.

For instance, companies like Apple or Microsoft use encryption technologies at various levels of their operating systems; e-commerce services like Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal; web browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome and mail services like Gmail, Yahoo and Rediff may be required to register with the government. The only way they may escape this requirement is if there is an exemption for products that are in use at a large scale. Network security service providers like Cisco Inc. will also need to comply. (Cisco declined to respond to a query.) Snapdeal said it is still examining the draft policy, while Amazon, Google, Microsoft did not reply to emails sent by Mint. Yahoo said its spokesperson was unavailable.

One clause that is drawing a lot of ire from industry veterans and technology enthusiasts requires individual users and businesses to store all information that was sent in an encrypted form for 90 days from the date of transaction. The users would also be required to reproduce the plain text and the encrypted text, if demanded by law enforcement agencies.

The draft policy also overlooks the privacy concerns of citizens and businesses. “It is clearly a violation of freedom of speech. A large part of the policy states how the government can interfere with users, like, by demanding their private messages. The policy is anti-privacy law,” said Prakash. “Privacy and security go hand in hand. So, as this policy weakens the security of the information, it puts the privacy at greater risk.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-moulishree-srivastava-september-22-2015-india-encryption-policy-draft-faces-backlash

India Dismisses Charges of Internet Censorship

praskrishna — 2012-08-26T05:29:15Z

Read, listen and learn English with this story. Double-click on any word to find the definition in the Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary.

This is the VOA Special English Technology Report. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The government in India is defending itself against charges of Internet censorship. The move comes after the government last week asked companies like Facebook and Twitter to block more than three hundred websites.

Officials accused the websites of posting edited images and videos of earthquake victims. They said the websites falsely claimed that the images were Muslim victims caught in recent ethnic conflict in India’s northeastern Assam state and Burma. A number of the images were reportedly uploaded from Pakistan.

Officials said the panic that resulted caused thousands of Hindu immigrants to flee the area. They feared that Muslims would answer the false reports with attacks of their own. Cyber law expert, lawyer Pawan Duggal says this is the first time the Internet and mobile-phone technology have been used to create fear in a community.

PAWAN DUGGAL: “India has to wake up to the need for putting cyber security as the number-one priority for the nation. Unfortunately, India does not even have a national cyber-security policy. The nation does not have any plan of action, should this kind of emergency happen again. India needs to have its own cyber army of cyber warriors.”

On Friday, India’s Communication and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal dismissed charges that the government is trying to censor social media. But he said the misuse of social media has to be prevented.

Pranesh Prakash is program manager at the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society. He says some of the web pages that have been blocked included official news websites.

PRANESH PRAKASH: “I am not questioning the motivations of the government which in this current case seemed to be above board. We found that most of the material that they have complained about is actually stuff that is communal. But I do feel that the government went overboard in doing so, that it has also curbed legitimate reportage.”

He says some of the websites were uploaded by people trying to let others know that the images were false.

The government in India has called on social media companies to come up with a plan to keep offensive material off the web. Last year, it passed a law that requires companies to remove so-called “objectionable content” when requested to do so.

A Google Transparency report says that last year India topped the list of countries that make such requests. Supporters of online freedom have expressed concern that India may be restricting web freedom.

About one hundred million people in India use the Internet - the third-largest number of net users in the world. About seven hundred million people have mobile phones.

And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report. I'm Steve Ember.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/learning-english-voanews-com-india-dismisses-charges-of-internet-censorship

India Debates Misuse of Social Media

praskrishna — 2012-09-04T12:13:21Z

India has blocked more than 250 websites after provocative online content spread panic among people from the country's northeast, prompting some of them to flee Indian cities. The crackdown has sparked a debate about how the country will cope with misuse of social media.

Anjana Pasricha's article was originally published by Voice of America on August 21, 2012 and re-posted in the Chosunilbo on September 4, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Officials say the websites that were blocked had posted edited images and videos of victims of earthquakes and claimed they were those of Muslim victims caught in recent ethnic strife in India's northeastern Assam state and Burma.

As the images went viral, rumors began about reprisal attacks against Hindu migrants from the northeast working in other parts of India. Hate text messages warning of violence circulated widely. Worried about their safety, thousands of the migrants fled Indian cities last week to return to Assam.

Taken aback by the mass exodus, the government says the "unity and integrity of the country is at stake."

Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde says that "elements" had used social networking sites to whip up communal sentiments. Shinde says a number of the sites had been uploaded from Pakistan. Shinde adds that the government has gathered a lot of evidence through the investigation, whether from Facebook communication or text messaging.

Officials have also blamed social networking sites such as Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook for not screening objectionable content.

Cyber specialists say the government needs to go beyond the blame game and learn how to manage misuse of social media on the massive scale witnessed last week. About 100 million people in India use the Internet, the third-largest number of net users in the world. About 700 million people have mobile phones.

Cyber law expert, lawyer Pawan Duggal says this is the first time the Internet and mobile-phone technology have been used to incite fear in a community.

"India has to wake up to the need of putting cyber security as the number-one priority for the nation," Duggal noted. "Unfortunately, India does not even have a cyber-security policy. The nation does not have any plan of action, should such an emergency happen again. India needs to have its own cyber army of cyber warriors."

The government has been involved in a dispute with web companies such as Google and Facebook for several months and has called for them to devise a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the web. India routinely asks these companies to remove what it calls "objectionable content," which has led to fears India may be diluting web freedom.

Sunil Abraham heads the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, an advocacy group for net freedom. He says the government's recent crackdown on hundreds of websites is warranted, but says it needs to be more sophisticated and aggressive in handling threats and rumors emanating from the internet.

"Social media websites and other Internet intermediaries should have been asked by the government to run banner advertising or some other form of messaging that revealed the lack of truth in the rumors that were circulating," Abraham explained. "The best way to deal with misinformation is to produce more accurate and more credible information. By just blocking access to fraudulent information, you do not fully undermine the power of rumors because by the time the government had decided to act the photographs and videos had already gone viral. And even though the websites are blocked these images will continue to circulate."

The exodus of northeast migrants from Indian cities has slowed in recent days as India has moved to block multimedia and bulk text messaging, and panic has subsided after repeated assurances of safety by the government.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-voanews-com-aug-21-2012-anjana-pasricha-india-debates-misuse-of-social-media

India debates limits to freedom of expression

praskrishna — 2012-02-28T09:50:37Z

From Google to Facebook, from world-famous author Salman Rushdie to a little-known political cartoonist, it has become increasingly easy in recent months to offend the Indian government, and to incur the wrath of the censor or even the threat of legal action.

This article by Simon Denyer was published in the Washington Post on February 13, 2012. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this.

In the world’s largest democracy, many Indians say freedom of expression is under attack, and along with it the values of pluralism and tolerance that have bound this nation of 1.2 billion people together since independence from Britain more than 64 years ago.

India’s democracy is nothing if not raucous. The huge array of newspapers and 24-hour television news channels are often vociferous in their criticism of politicians. But the media’s determination to root out corruption in the past two years has prompted a backlash. Talk of more stringent regulation is mounting.

At the same time, artists say their creative freedom has been steadily eroded. Even Jay Leno managed to offend Indian Sikhs — and prompt an official government complaint — with a satirical reference to their holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, in a joke about Mitt Romney’s vacation homes.

At fault, many say, is a thin-skinned government that gives in to the demands of violent mobs, ostensibly to make political gains but in fact to suppress its critics.

“For a country that takes great pride in its democracy and history of free speech, the present situation is troubling,” said Nilanjana Roy, a columnist and literary critic. “Especially in the creative sphere, the last two decades have been progressively intolerant.”

Targeting authors, artists

Rushdie, whose novel “The Satanic Verses” was banned in India in 1988, was forced to cancel appearances at the Jaipur Literature Festival last month after threats of violence from Muslim groups and a warning about a possible assassination attempt — information he said was probably fabricated by authorities to keep him away.

Wary of alienating Muslim voters in ongoing state elections, not a single Indian politician spoke out in favor of Rushdie’s right to be heard.

Last month, the screening of a documentary on Kashmir was canceled at a college in the city of Pune after right-wing Hindus objected, and an artist was beaten in his gallery in Delhi for showing nude paintings of actresses and models that his attackers claimed were an insult to the country.

The release of the latest book by Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen was canceled in Kolkata after Muslims protested, and Aseem Trivedi, a 25-year-old political cartoonist, was charged with treason and insulting India’s national emblems in drawings inspired by activist Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.

But perhaps the most shocking episode for advocates of freedom of expression has been the government’s attempt to muzzle Facebook and Google — and prosecute the companies’ executives — for content posted on their sites deemed to be offensive. “Like China, we can block all such Web sites,” warned the judge hearing the case in the Delhi High Court.

The government cites images insulting to one or another of India’s religions, content it says could provoke unrest. It is up to social media sites, the government says, to manually screen and censor all potentially offensive content or face prosecution.

“No freedom can be absolute,” said the chairman of the Press Council of India, Justice Markandey Katju. “The hold of religion is very strong in India, and you have to respect that. You can’t go insulting people.”

Katju’s concerns are perhaps understandable in a country whose birth was scarred by the mass murder of Hindus and Muslims at the time of independence in 1947. But the effect, critics say, is to give the mob the power of veto and take away a fundamental right in a free society: the right to offend others.

Sunil Abraham at the Center for Internet and Society says the government’s proposals on Web censorship would kill the vibrancy of the Internet in India. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales warned that they would scare off investors and crush the country’s potential to become a true leader in the Internet industry.

The irony, according to critics, is that the concern over religiously offensive content was little more than an excuse: What appears to have really offended the ruling Congress party were defamatory images of their idolized leader, Sonia Gandhi.

“The myth that is spread is that the government is acting against hate speech and obscenity. But when the government acts to control information on the Internet, it is usually defamatory or potentially defamatory content against people and politicians,” Abraham said.

Almost a year ago, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the media were undermining the nation’s self-confidence by harping on official corruption. Since then, talk of tighter media regulation has grown louder.

And despite the vibrancy of India’s mainstream English-language media, the country’s ranking on the press freedom index of the journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders has dropped, from 105th in 2009 to 131st last year.

An optimistic view

Arnab Goswami, the editor and anchor of the Times Now television channel, points to television’s dramatic success in exposing official corruption in the past two years to argue that there is plenty to be optimistic about.

Courts in India generally have a better record than do politicians of defending freedom of expression. And there are people in government, including Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni, determined to resist the temptation to take a harder line.

“The pressure was enormous, to control the media, to clamp down on the media,” she said. “But I did withstand the pressure.”

Soni said she sees self-regulation by the media rather than official regulation as the way forward. She maintains that, for example, the debate about Rushdie has not necessarily done India any harm.

“That’s the strength of Indian society,” she said. “You have discussed it, everyone has had their say on the matter, the government has had its share of criticism, yet we’ve moved on.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-debates-limits-to-freedom-of-expression

India curbs on Bloggers and Internet

praskrishna — 2011-05-13T11:59:20Z

The Information Technology Rules 2011 (due diligence observed by intermediaries guidelines) by the Indian government could lead to online censorship, feel human rights activists. This article by Ayyappa Prasad was published in TruthDrive on April 29, 2011.

"This will curtail the freedom of expression of individual bloggers, because as an intermediary they will become responsible for the readers’ comments. It technically means that any comment or a reader-posted link on a blog which according to the government is threatening, abusive, objectionable, defamatory, vulgar, racial, among other omnibus categories, will now be considered as the legal responsibility of the blogger," said a blogger.

Blogs, which are typically maintained and updated by individuals, have showcased their political importance in recent times and the internet community views these rules as a lopsided attempt to curtail an individual’s right to expression.

"If individual blogs are an intermediary, then why can’t Facebook and Twitter also be classified as such, as they too receive, store and transmit electronic records and facilitate online discussions," retorts the spokesperson of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based organization, which works on digital pluralism. " These rules will not only bring bloggers and the ISP provider on the same platform, but the due diligence clause will also result in higher power of censorship to the larger player. Imagine your ISP provider blocking your blog because it finds that certain user-comments fit these omnibus terms," the CIS spokesperson added.

Intermediaries include web-hosting providers, which would include companies like Amazon, cyber cafes, payment sites like Paypal, online auction sites, ISPs like BSNL, Airtel, etc. Blogs also fall in this category as networked service providers. The due diligence specifies intermediaries should not display, upload, modify or publish any information that is 'harmful' , 'threatening' , 'abusive' , 'harassing' , 'blasphemous' , 'objectionable' , 'defamatory' , 'vulgar' , 'obscene' , 'pornographic' , 'paedophilic' , 'libellous' , 'invasive of another’s privacy' , 'hateful' , 'disparaging' , 'racially , ethnically or otherwise objectionable' , 'relating to money laundering or gambling'.

Read the original here

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India Chills Online Speech

praskrishna — 2011-05-05T03:19:50Z

While most governments try to control online freedom of speech in a somewhat restrictive manner, either as a collaborator or as a regulator, rarely do they formulate a law to curb online speech. Rarer still does a government provide sweeping powers to intermediaries like an ISP and administrators of Internet sites to control content based on a long list of criteria. This news was published in 'digital communities' on May 3, 2011.

In a quiet move early last month, India passed a new set of rules called Information Technology Rules Act 2011, that curtail freedom of Internet speech by not only empowering the Department of Information Technology to block any site that displays disparaging content based on a list of criteria defined by the Department. But it also empowered any official or private citizen to demand the removal of content that they consider objectionable.

For the first time, it also made intermediaries like an ISP or an Internet site that facilitates user-generated content -- like Google, Facebook, and blogs -- responsible for censoring the Internet.

“The intermediary shall not knowingly host or publish any information or shall not initiate the transmission, select the receiver of transmission, and select or modify the information contained in the transmission, [of content specified by the Act]” it says.

For that matter Internet censorship is not new in India. "This country practices censorship in various forms," says Apar Gupta, a Cyberlaw expert at New Delhi-based Accendo Law Partners. "However it is usually done by a government body or a court order after balancing the interests of free speech and individual or societal harm. Hence, we have film certification and provisions under the Criminal Procedure Code under which a book or any other publication may be banned by a state government by issuing a detailed order in the official gazette. In cases where parties approach courts, courts finely balance competing interests as well.

”But the new rules have for the first time brought censorship, with regard to online content, with a force of law. The new rules even incentivize intermediaries or private parties to censor the Internet,” he added.

The new law is sweeping. For instance, it says that any statement that threatens the unity, integrity; defense, security or sovereignty of India or friendly relations with foreign states or public order, must be removed from Web content.

Moreover, besides banning content that is “harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, pedophilic, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever,” it also forbids publication of content that is “grossly harmful."

“These rules are not only unfair and blatantly clamp down on freedom of expression, they also put vague limits to freedom of expression and are thus debatable in terms of being constitutionally valid,” says Sunil Abraham, the executive director for the Center for Internet and Society.

As an instance, Gupta points to a clause in the rules prohibiting content that “harm[s] minors in any way.”

Gupta says there is no set definition under the existing civil and criminal law as to what could be considered "harming minors in any way."

“In the absence of any definable legal standards, what then could form the basis of whether content is harming minors or not?” he asks.

The rules threaten to damage entrepreneurship in a big way as well, allege critics.

“Under the new law anyone can lodge a complaint -- say against an amateur mobile software application developer whose product competes with an application of say Apple or Google. While large companies can afford legal expenses of challenging an IPR violation claim, a small-time developer has no option but to succumb to such challenges.”says Abraham adding, “Online anonymity is vital for creativity and entrepreneurship on the Web.”

Read the original news here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/online-speech