With the vast expansion of Internet services and their necessities in the digital world, awareness about Internet regulation is must. The great majority of Internet users are not aware that they access a regulated version of World Wide Web where doing something to anything may result to a very dangerous transgression for the future. A lot of discussion and debate has taken place about privacy and IT act, whether with regard to freedom of speech, citizens’ rights, state surveillance or the Internet licensing stand. However, the most critical aspect that gives way to all these discussions and debates is, what should the citizens’ in India must know about Internet laws? How Internet users can make themselves more secure and safe by ensuring better protection of personal data?

Often laws are defined in a manner that it lay down all the substantive rights of the citizens. But it is due to lack of awareness of beneficiaries that most of the time they fail to respect and realize rights, demand justice, accountability and effective remedies at all levels. Recently, after hearing batch of public interest litigation on ambit, Honorable Supreme Court finally quashed down section 66(A) which allowed arrests for “inconvenient, abusive, and annoying messages on any online media, including ones involving freedom of expression”. The government also admit that section 66(A) of the Information and Technology Act had certain “aberrations amounting to abuse”. It means from now on section 66(A) atleast doesn’t have any legal standing.

Indians would have rejoice this decision, but wait how many of us know, that by striking down section 66(A), the Supreme Court of India paved the path for other challenges in cyber space for citizens’. Until the issue of further amendments in IT Act, every citizen must be aware about his/her privacy and cyber laws which will be helpful to exercise their rights. There are certain sections and articles which must be understood by every Indians in cyber space. These are discussed below:

1. Article 19 of the Constitution of India states:
2. Article 19(1)(a): grants every citizens with the right to freedom of speech and expression.
3. Article 19(2): states, that nothing in sub-clause (a) of clause (1) shall affect the operation of any existing law, or prevent the State from making any law, in so far as such law imposes reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub-clause in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.

Thus there is distinct contradiction between section 66(A) and article 19(2) of the Indian Constitution, which provides government to issue another amendment to exercise powers under Article 19(2).

Section 69(A) ” Power to block any content ” of Information Technology Act states:

Section 69(A) allows the Indian government the power to block/censor any website or internet service, without giving the creator or provider of the content a chance to defend the material or even to get it unblocked. Within this, any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted on any computer resource, if found offending or annoying can be blocked for access by the public.

Section 79 “Punishment for platforms like YouTube, ISP, etc.” of Information Technology Act states:

The “intermediary” such as ISP, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. can be punished if they does not actively censor material that the government or any person complains about, without giving intermediary any chance to defend the content. This section provides a dangerous tool to disrupt the business of an intermediary by flooding it with baseless complains and notices.

Section 84(B)”Punishment for abetment of offences” and Section 84(C) “Punishment for attempt to commit offences” of Information Technology Act states:

This gives the powers to police officers of the rank of an Inspector to arrest any person without a warrant in case of any instigation or attempt of committing any offense under IT Act. There is no defined objective guidelines, which could help police officer in arresting any person in a public place who is about to commit a cyber crime.

Section 118(D)”Punishment for causing annoyance by sending mails” of Kerala Police Act states:

Like section 66(A), it is illegal to cause annoyance to anyone in an “indecent manner” by sending messages or mails by any means. This was meant to be a safeguard against stalkers and spammers, but unfortunately becomes a way of suppressing certain kinds of speech as “online illegal speech” is not defined under this act.

Section 43(A) “Compensation for failure to protect data” and Section 72(A) “Punishment for disclosure of information in breach of lawful contract” of Information Technology Act states:

These sections provide the concept of data privacy and its protection. Section 43(A) helps in getting compensations from any corporate body for the negligence in implementing or maintaining reasonable security practices and procedures by complying with the best standards like ISO 27001, etc. for safeguarding the sensitive personal data or information (SPDI). Here SPDI includes:

1. Passwords
2. Financial information such as bank account or credit card or debit card or other payment instrument details
3. Biometric information
4. Deoxyribonucleic acid data
5. Sexual preferences and practices
6. Medical history and health
7. Political affiliation
8. Commission, or alleged commission, of any offence and
9. Ethnicity, religion, race or caste

Further section 72(A) also deals with personal sensitive information and provides punishment for disclosure of information without the information provider’s consent or in breach of lawful contract. Both of these sections are at a nascent stage which needs to be stringent.

Apart from urgent amendments in IT Act, a special attention must be paid to the data privacy rights in India which is an essential part of civil liberties protection in cyberspace. A right to privacy bill, 2014 is in draft phase, which will help individuals to protect against misuse of data by government or private agencies. Until then each one of us must be careful while accessing, downloading or uploading different contents and stuffs on internet.

Akansha Pandey
MS- Cyber Law Information Security
IIITA