Jammers in schools soon to keep porn at bay?

NEWDELHI:The government said in the Supreme Court on Friday that the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has been asked to explore the option of putting jammers to prevent students from accessing online child pornography in school.

The court was hearing a petition seeking a directive to the government to block all websites hosting pornographic content.

Additional solicitor general Pinky Anand said that 3,522 sites were blocked in June, but ruled out installing jammers in school buses as part of steps to prevent youngsters from being abused sexually on the internet.

“It’s not possible to have jammers in buses, but to install them inside school premise is under consideration. The CBSE has been instructed to take up the issue with school managements,” Anand said.

The CBSE is the country’s top school board and more than 10,000 institutions are affiliated to it.

Most schools teach computers and the internet has become part of the curriculum, enhancing knowledge as well as putting the students at risk of being sexually exploited online. Children in school buses accessing porn on mobile phones remain a grey area.

There is no accurate data on the number of Indian children being exploited in pornographic material as many victims do not go to police because of fear and shame. There were 96 reports of children being sexually exploited online in 2015, according to National Crimes Records Bureau data.

The government told a threejudge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra that it will take steps to deal with the “situation in its entirety”.

It said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) shares an Interpol list on online child sexual abuse material with the government, which then orders internet service providers to block these sites. This list is updated regularly.

India doesn’t have a centralised mechanism to monitor websites containing child porn.

A government committee has suggested that internet service providers should disable such sites until the monitoring system is created.

Besides, the service providers were asked to spread awareness among subscribers about the use of parental control filters in their machines.