Share compliance details: Govt to social media firms
MOST PROMINENT COMPANIES SUCH AS FB, TWITTER, WHATSAPP AND GOOGLE ARE YET TO COMPLY WITH THE NEW RULES
The Indian government has written to all social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to send details of their compliance officer, nodal contact person, resident grievance officer and physical contact address in India, asking them to confirm if they have complied with the new Information Technology Act guidelines after the deadline to do so ended on Tuesday.
The guidelines, seen as controversial by the industry as well as activists, put in place a new mechanism for companies to regulate content, appoint officers who will be liable for compliance, and adopt features such as traceability of messages and voluntary user verification.
“Government through a separate notification has also prescribed that a social media intermediary having fifty lakh (5 million) registered users in India will be considered a Significant Social Media Intermediary (SSMI),” the ministry of electronics and information technology
NEW DELHI:
(Meity) said in its communication to the companies.
“Additional set of due diligence for SSMI and are being administered. The additional due diligence required from SSMI have come into effect today, at the conclusion of three additional months given to SSMIS.” The government asked the social media intermediaries to preferably share the details by the end of Wednesday.
Most of the prominent companies, including social media giants Facebook and Twitter, instant messaging application Whatsapp, and Google are yet to comply with the new rules, the deadline for which lapsed on May 25. While Whatsapp has a resident grievance officer, it is yet to appoint a compliance officer. Twitter and Facebook too have not appointed anyone yet.
Facebook on Tuesday said it aims to comply with the new guidelines but indicated there were unresolved issued.
Google has advertised for the post of a compliance officer and in a statement said that it “respects India’s legislative process”. “We respect India’s legislative process and have a long history of responding to government requests to remove content where the content violates the local law or our product policies. We realise that our work in keeping our platforms secure is never done and we will continue to refine our existing approaches, and evolve our policies and be as transparent as possible about how we make decisions,” a Google spokesperson said.
The government has further asked social media intermediaries to specify why they may not be considered a significant one by providing the number of registered users on the platform. “The Government reserves the right to seek any additional information, as may be permitted within these Rules and the IT
Act,” it wrote.
Under part four of the guidelines, the intermediaries are required to appoint compliance officers, “responsible for ensuring compliance with the Act and rules” and be “liable in any proceedings relating to any relevant third-party information, data or communication link made available or hosted by that intermediary where he fails to ensure that such intermediary observes due diligence while discharging its duties under the Act”.
Koo, the Indian social media app, has announced it had complied with the new requirements and appointed a resident grievance officer, chief compliance officer, and nodal contact officer.
Criticising the new rules, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said: “The issuance of the new intermediary guidelines reflect the BJP government’s syndrome, which is a ‘Big Daddy syndrome’. It is a control freak syndrome…. You would make the North Korean model of control of the media blush,” Singhvi said. HT on Monday reported that officials warned of action if the deadline was not met.
llllllTraceability will break end-to-end encryption and lead to a ‘dangerous invasion of privacy’. The rule is unconstitutional since it does not pass the tests of legality, necessity and proportionality laid down in the Puttuswamy judgment for steps that can infringe on privacy. Identifying the originator of one message will require every communication to be stored. Since order to trace originator does not require court order, there is ‘no guarantee against arbitrary state action’.
Rule is not backed by statutory powers in corresponding clause of law — Section 79 of IT Act. No other country compels intermediaries to trace origin of a message.
llllllGovernment respects right to privacy as fundamental right but no right is absolute. The test of proportionality is met since message originator will be traced only when other steps have been exhausted.
An order to trace an originator will be passed only for specific purposes such as offences relating to sovereignty, public order, sexual crimes.
None of the measures proposed by India will impact common users.
Whatsapp’s challenge is a last moment attempt to stop new rules from coming into effect. What India is asking for is significantly much less than what some of the other countries have demanded.