The Hindu Business Line : Making cyber safe

IT IS HEARTENING to note that the evaluation by the Government-appointed Expert Committee of the legislative framework of the Information Technology Act is apace. Hopefully, the Committee's recommendations will resolve the issues thrown up by the controversial arrest and subsequent release of e-Bay India's Chief Executive Officer late last year in connection with the sale on the web site of objectionable material. This case had clearly highlighted the need for the IT Act to fall in line with legal practices applicable to third party auction sites in places such as the US where e-commerce has taken deep roots.

In the US, the network service provider is given an opportunity to remove the objectionable material from the web site as soon his attention is drawn to it. Action is taken only if the site manager fails to act on this notice. This amendment is necessary, as a distinction needs to be drawn between the actual vendor of the objectionable material — pornography, in the e-Bay India case — and the intermediary — such as the Internet auction site — used to facilitate the commerce. While the e-Bay case is the proximate reason for a review of the IT Act, the terms of reference of the Expert Committee are much wider, including such vital areas as growth of e-commerce, cyber security, technology neutrality, regulation of cyber cafes and data protection. Whatever the views of the Committee, given the vast gamut of issues under reference, it is desirable that the Government allows free public scrutiny of the recommendations so as to pave the way for a wider debate on these issues.

Few would dispute the fact that advances in information technology are happening at a mind-boggling pace. It is only natural that a law framed keeping in view the state of the technology at that point of time will not be able to deal with all emerging situations. The Committee would, therefore, be better advised to keep its recommendations of the legal framework for the IT sector as technology neutral as possible. For instance, while the current IT Act covers digital signatures in detail, the technology has progressed towards biometrics and other means of recognition, creating the need to accommodate them in the IT Act. Similarly, in the area of security, notions of crime that did not go beyond hacking of web sites would be hopelessly inadequate to address the issue of impersonation or mis-representation that is easily possible in the cyber space.

Finally, in the area of data protection and privacy, India will have to create a well-defined regime by making changes to the IT Act. Though the absence of data protection laws has not affected the IT-enabled services industry in any big way so far, opponents of outsourcing, especially in the US, have often cited this as reason enough to stop movement of call-centre and BPO work to India. A proper data protection law will not only help sustain the buoyancy in the low-end, third party BPO market such as telemarketing or insurance claims processing, but also create growth opportunities in the high-end areas in banking or pharmaceuticals.

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