TECHNOLOGY/INTERNET FREEDOM
to mandatorily upload filters to proactively weed out unlawful or noxious content. Besides, they would have to preserve their records for at least 180 days to aid government investigators. Champions of free Internet and rights organisations worry that the amendments would facilitate unchecked surveillance and seriously undermine the right to privacy. A global coalition of civil society organisations and security experts has warned Prasad that the change will undermine the fundamental right to privacy of users without addressing the problems that the ministry seeks to resolve. “These not only violate Indian constitutional standards regarding fundamental rights and international human rights law, but also chill free expression and access to information,” the coalition said.
GOVERNMENT BRAKES ON FRIVOLOUS CONTENT The central criticism against the proposed amendment is that it contravenes a landmark Supreme Court judgement. In the 2015 Shreya Singhal writ case on online freedom of speech, the court clearly stated that online content could be removed from intermediary platforms only by government or court order. This protected the platforms from liability and served as a brake on frivolous or agenda-driven takedown demands. Software Freedom Law Centre, Delhi, a legal services organisation that works to protect freedom in the digital world, says the requirement for automated filters in the amended guidelines to remove illegal content runs foul of the law and current jurisprudence.
Tech giants and security experts have joined the free speech lobby in opposing the liability regime on account of the technical problems. They complain that many of the proposals would be impossible to implement and ought to be dropped, such as the use of automated tools to proactively indentify and remove unlawful content.
In their latest missive to Prasad, security professionals pointed out that services using end-to-end encryption cannot provide the level of monitoring required by the Indian government. “Whether it’s through putting a ‘backdoor’ in an encryption protocol, storing crypto