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Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee

New Delhi , Aug. 24

VOYEURS using technology to have some fun at the expense of others may have to pay a heavy price.

An expert committee constituted for an in-depth review of issues relating to Information Technology Act, 2000 is learnt to have favoured treating `video voyeurism' as a criminal offence, punishable with imprisonment up to one year or with a fine of up to Rs 2 lakh. The accused might also have to shell out a compensation of as much as Rs 25 lakh to the person affected.

"It has been proposed that whoever intentionally captures or broadcasts an image of a private area of an individual without his/her consent, and knowingly does so under circumstances in which the individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, should be punished with imprisonment or with a fine, and compensation," sources pointed out.

The move comes in the backdrop of recent cases involving the use of gadgets such as Web cameras, cellphone cameras and digital cameras for cyberporn crimes. Earlier this year, a Web camera porn scam surfaced in Pune after three college girls residing in a rented bungalow approached the police, alleging that they were being secretly filmed by their landlord. After an inquiry, the police found that the landlord had installed at least one Web camera in the tubelight fitting of one of the rooms occupied by the girls.

Currently, Section 67 of the IT Act 2000 deals with publishing information, which is obscene in an electronic form. However, the sources pointed out the existing section pertains to obscenity, while the section now mooted would deal with "pornography by deceit" where the person photographed may be unaware of the act.

The expert committee is headed by Mr Brijesh Kumar, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, and comprises Dr A.K. Chakravarty, Scientist, DIT, Mr Kiran Karnik, President of Nasscom, and Mr Ajay Chowdhry, Chairman, HCL Infosystems Ltd. It was set up earlier this year following the controversy caused by the arrest of the CEO of Baazee.com in a case that involved the sale of a sexually explicit clip on the auction site.

Other recommendations of the committee include widening the ambit of computer offences as defined under the legislation, in the wake of rapid technological advancements. For instance, phishing (the act of sending an e-mail to a user, falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise to trick the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft) was not a widely known way back in 1999.

With the IT Act 2000 in its present form covering only digital signatures, the expert committee has also favoured extending it to other forms of e-signatures such as bio-metrics and fingerprints, or even treating e-mail ID as a signature.

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