The Hindu Business Line : Ministry considering tougher penalty for IT offences

THE Ministry for IT and Communications is now looking at increasing the punishment for certain kinds of offences such as unauthorised access, downloading, copying or extracting information from a computer resource dishonestly or fraudulently against the punishment suggested by an expert committee.

The punishment may be raised to up to two years imprisonment or fine of up to Rs 5 lakh, against one year imprisonment or Rs 2 lakh fine suggested by the committee.

The amendments to the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, are likely to be introduced in the ensuing winter session of the Parliament.

Earlier, the expert panel had suggested up to one year imprisonment or a fine of up to Rs 2 lakh or both if any person — dishonestly or fraudulently — without permission of the owner or in-charge of the computer resource accesses, downloads, copies or extracts data, or causes `denial of access' to any person authorised to access computer resource. In the same section, it had prescribed an imprisonment of two years or a fine of up to Rs 5 lakh or both for other offences such as introducing computer virus, causing impairment of electronic resource, manipulating a system or damaging a system.

Subsequently, there were some views that less grave offences were attracting a more severe punishment, and the Ministry is thinking of making it uniform for all kinds of offences in the section now. All the offences in the first clause would be brought at par with the subsequent one.

Other changes in the offing include a clarification that BPOs are not considered as intermediaries (such as telecom service providers, Internet service providers, and auction sites), and, hence, do not get covered under a section dealing with `limitation of liability of intermediary.'

This means that while companies such as telecom service providers, ISPs or auction sites such as Baazee.com would not be liable, for any third party information except in those cases where they conspired in commission of an unlawful act, the same logic cannot be extended to call centres.

Given the recent spate of high-profile cases of alleged information theft in call centres, including the much-publicised Karan Bahree incident, BPOs handling sensitive personal data — if found negligent in implementing and maintaining reasonable security practice — are likely to be made liable to pay damages by way of compensation of up to Rs 1 crore.

"There is no exemption of liability for a BPO under the section pertaining to an intermediary. BPOs are covered under Section 43 (dealing with compensation for damage to computer or computer system), while BPO employees are covered under the same section and Section 66 (dealing with computer related offences)," said Mr Brijesh Kumar, Secretary, Department of IT.

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