The Hindu Business Line : Positive step forward

Close observers of the cyber crime scene in India had, for long, carried on a strident campaign in favour of making penalties under the IT Act 2000 very stringent.

The dithering on the subject by the Union Government witnessed for several years had, however, offered little hope to them.

Then came the refreshing IT Act (Amendment Bill) 2006 placed on the floor of Parliament in December that year, which was remitted to the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Information Technology, headed by Nikhil Kumar, then MP and presently Governor of Nagaland.

This Committee displayed remarkable patience in hearing diverse points of view and striking foresight in coming out with several changes to the Act, which were incorporated in the IT Amendment Bill 2008 that was passed by Parliament last December.

Ironically, the proceedings in Parliament were all too brief — 26 minutes to be precise — indicating a general lack of interest in a matter that is of great importance to a country that prides itself to be IT-savvy.

Then followed a spell of nine months of silence when one was kept guessing as to why the Act was not being notified.

At last, press reports on October 28, 2009 claimed that the Act had indeed been notified.

Filling the gaps

The IT Amendment Act 2008 is definitely a positive step forward towards removing earlier ambiguities and filling many lacunae in the law as it stood.

Fighting cyber crime should now be on a firmer footing than before. Sections 65 to 78 of Chapter XI deal with several offences and related administrative provisions.

Constraints of space permit me to deal only with what strike me as the more important and controversial features of the new IT Act.

There is a penal section (66 F) that deals with ‘cyber terrorism’ that is wholly justified in the context of events all over the world, although there are some who believe that this form of terrorism is more hypothetical than real.

There is no doubt that, till now, the terrorist has not unleashed any major offensive on cyberspace and has used the medium only for intra-group communication.

One, however, wonders how far this benevolence will remain! The prescribed penalty of life imprisonment may or may not be a deterrent.

Another menace on cyberspace is pornography. Nothing can be more obnoxious than transmitting online lurid material to computer users across the world.

And little else is as lucrative, because of the enormous clientele that is readily available and who belong to different strata of society.

A major international raid by law enforcement officials a few years ago actually revealed that many buyers belonged to an elitist group that included judges, lawyers and police officers.

While making such transmission a cognisable offence (Sections 67 and 67 A), what should please us most is the special provision in the Act for tackling child pornography, an evil that is all pervasive and threatens to harm children across the globe.

The first conviction for such an offence entails a five-year prison term, and subsequent ones attract seven years. This seems reasonable and not excessive if one considers the damage done by those who exploit children.

Here, I must compliment TULIR, a Chennai-based NGO that made an exclusive presentation on the subject before Nikhil Kumar’s Parliamentary Committee during the last few hearings and carried the day.

Contentious provisions

Perhaps the most contentious provisions of the new Act are Sections 69 and 69A. The former relates to the powers conferred on the State and Union Government “to issue directions for interception or monitoring or decryption of any informationthrough any computer resource”.

What should gall those who speak for individual liberty and demand whittling down of State authority to fetter freedom of expression is that the Section does not put down any safeguard that such State action shall be exercised only under some extraordinary circumstances, such as a national Emergency.

It must also be remembered that the earlier Act of 2000 had permitted only decryption of messages. The new Act goes beyond to add ‘interception’ and ‘monitoring’ as falling within the purview of government functionaries.

It is anybody’s guess as to how Courts will view this section if and when its Constitutionality is challenged. Perhaps the framing of comprehensive rules to ensure that government agencies did not misuse the authority could satisfy Courts.

Section 69A that permits executive action to ‘block’ public access of any information in a computer resource is again contentious. Of course such action will be only under certain special circumstances, such as the need to protect India’s sovereignty and integrity.

In the hands of an unscrupulous government such a sweeping power could be misused.

Nevertheless it is an important weapon in the executive’s armoury when fighting anti-national and ant-social elements.

You cannot deny such authority to a lawfully constituted government, especially in the present times when the country is threatened by elements across the border who want to see violence and disorder in India.

What is of utmost importance is the early framing of guidelines that are proof against subjective and tendentious abuse.

Whatever be the controversies that are in the offing with regard to the new law, as individuals, we should be concerned more with safeguarding our children, the youth and women against crime facilitated by the misuse of computers.

Their sexual exploitation online is a real danger. Mere dependence on stringent cyber crime legislation will not afford total protection.

We need to evolve our own rules of prudence to guide the whole family on how to surf the Net with absolute caution.

There is need for extreme circumspection, especially while accessing social networking sites.

A recent case reported from the UK is relevant. One Ashleigh Hall (17) was a final year student of child care at Darlington College who lived with her mother near Durham. An outgoing and “bubbly” girl she met Chapman (32) a homeless man on Facebook. The latter had passed himself off as a 16-year old boy.

On his persistent request for a face-to-face meeting, Ashleigh went across to meet him on a Sunday evening. But she never returned home. Her body was found one day later in a field near a local restaurant. Chapman has since been arrested.

It is believed that Ashleigh was murdered presumably because she bore a striking resemblance to a former girl friend of Chapman who had separated from him earlier. It is possible that Chapman saw Ashleigh’s picture on Facebook.

A psychiatric disorder and a sense of betrayal ultimately culminated in the brutal murder of an innocent girl, whose only fault was she looked like an estranged girl friend of the murderer.

This is the peril of getting hooked to social networking sites. It is hard to exaggerate the role of parents in averting such disasters.

The writer is a former CBI Director who is currently Adviser (Security) to TCS Ltd.

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