The Amendments to the IT Act, 2000

C

cranky

Skilled
Opening discussion for the new Amendments passed by the two Houses to the IT Act, 2000. Some fundamental questions:

1. The State's ability and resources to monitor correspondence and content,

2. The definitions of inappropriate and malicious content, and

3. Potential for abuse and loopholes in the Act.

Here's a link to get you started (note the date, it's 4 months old):

The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Opinion | There is an inspector in my email

And here's a post from vishalrao who picked up the issue, but the discussion faltered and failed to amplify it. It's the only post in the whole forum that talks about it, I hadn't picked it up till somebody posted the Telegraph article on Facebook, and that was today.

http://www.techenclave.com/1117255-post8.html

There seems to be some media noise about the issue recently, but it's surprising that it missed almost all of us completely. Are we being blindsided? Seems the new amendments are not yet published, either on the government portals which seem to be carrying the last amendments from 2006, but not the ones passed in April (or whenever).

Any legal experts here who would know about this? And any comments?
 
Where's the post? I cant find my own post :D

from what i remember, its like now any low level police peon can "raid" your house and take away your computer based on flimsy "suspicion" of improper conduct/activity... there must be other issues about the amendments being discussed around the blogosphere im sure...
 
Means we should stop downloading *ahem* stuff and also not watch pron (only for those who are into this). Man rip off my internet, i am ok with dial up then :eek:hyeah:
 
Why you worry? You are far far away in Chinki Land/ Green Dam Land... There are other issues at hand for you :p
 
^^ Lollzzz

Ya the green dam sucks. But i have found ways to circumvent the censorship here using free proxies and also VPN access :)

Damn i searched 'Zack and Miri Make a porno' and they blocked it and shut off my google access for a few minutes :mad:
 
cranky said:
There seems to be some media noise about the issue recently, but it's surprising that it missed almost all of us completely. Are we being blindsided?
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There have been murmurings here & there.

cranky said:
Seems the new amendments are not yet published, either on the government portals which seem to be carrying the last amendments from 2006, but not the ones passed in April (or whenever).
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See here for a history of this Act since 2000. ITA Amendment Bill 2008 was signed into an Act by the President on 5th February 2009. Government of India is now in the process of framing the rules which are required under the amendments. On completion of this exercise, the date of effect of the amendments would be notified.

The draft rules being proposed by Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) under ITA 2008 are here
 
ubergeek said:
holy shite so we if we watch porn we are screwed??????
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No. It means that you can get screwed royally for no particular reason at all,

In a country with rampart corruption where you need to bribe govt officials just to get them to do their duty and where policemen take protection money from legit businesses to protect them from their own harassment and where a traffic policeman can freely stop any vehicle for no particular reason and threaten them with a challan/court hearing for some imaginary offense in case they don't give a bribe, we can hardly expect that a power like this without safe guards in place will not be misused to oblivion.

Simply put, just imagine any Police Inspector can walk in to to your house seize your high end PC, Phone etc and walk away and you will be helpless to do anything. If they want to screw you further, they can plant any evidence against you and can then blackmail you. The opportunities for them will be boundless.
 
I think you just nailed the issue. It's a pretty draconian Act. One of my friends has given a pretty lengthy legal opinion on the Act and its interpretations, and it does not look good. Since the accountability of our law enforcement system is is very low and its persuasive power is very high, misuse of the Act is the biggest fear.
 
No. It means that you can get screwed royally for no particular reason at all,

In a country with rampart corruption where you need to bribe govt officials just to get them to do their duty and where policemen take protection money from legit businesses to protect them from their own harassment and where a traffic policeman can freely stop any vehicle for no particular reason and threaten them with a challan/court hearing for some imaginary offense in case they don't give a bribe, we can hardly expect that a power like this without safe guards in place will not be misused to oblivion.

Simply put, just imagine any Police Inspector can walk in to to your house seize your high end PC, Phone etc and walk away and you will be helpless to do anything. If they want to screw you further, they can plant any evidence against you and can then blackmail you. The opportunities for them will be boundless.
Click to expand...

Huh, whats the fuss, what do you need a new act for, they can do/ and they do so even otherwise. In case you guys forgot we are just a notch over banana republic, in terms of government.
 
One consistently aired point of view is "If you have nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear". As we've seen, this is not always true in our country. Whistle-blowers are murdered or slapped with false cases, ordinary citizens who want to raise their voices against the State are silenced, sometimes brutally. It's enough to make you want to emigrate...

Back to discussion - I guess I'm talking about the intentions behind the Act: it presumes every citizen is a suspected enemy of the state and the Internet and technology a medium for them to propagate malice and harmful/objectionable content. And that is my biggest problem - the presumed guilt of every netizen. There are 5 million or so internet users, how are they going to monitor every single piece of communication? How will this Act be implemented by the 500 (?) strong Cybercell and a totally uneducated police force? And what are the safeguards for ordinary, innocent citizens? Pornography is illegal for sure in the country, so it's fine if the Act clamps down harshly on offenders. But technically, Aces' post above
we are just a notch over banana republic, in terms of government
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is basically a malicious comment against the State. How is that treated?

Or look at LN's post above,
In a country with rampart corruption where you need to bribe govt officials just to get them to do their duty and where policemen take protection money from legit businesses to protect them from their own harassment and where a traffic policeman can freely stop any vehicle for no particular reason and threaten them with a challan/court hearing for some imaginary offense in case they don't give a bribe,
Click to expand...

Will we be forced to stop airing our views because someone deems it 'Malicious'? Is this the beginning of curtailing our freedom of speech? If the Act were in force today, someone could take these two posts and get TE blocked. Really. That's the problem.

We do need some action. As of now, I don't know what.
 
"police can raid house & seize our high end pc "
but such above becomes reality generally with p2p guys & if we have read about from other countries case where RIAA like agency are mostly target torrent admin / staff related with server farm & etc .We all know neither of us having such 100/100 mbps server line with home or biz that 1 can operate his torrent site from india itself .Almost all desi trackers server related stuff based in non indian soil .

There were "warez/ porn" guys in past who run such set up /server farm from our gr8 indian soil ( with help of corporate & collage line ) but it's just history , non of it exist from here now.

yes there some few examples of home users who caught & got fine for millions of $ , but they are mainly done for new spread .

let's assume if indian gr8 desi RIAA make such case , with our law system , do you think your case will get final hearing in few days ?

if u get caught start looking for bride , may be when your son / daughter learn how to use p2p , you will get notice for your case hearing :ashamed:
 
^^ the point isn't about whether you do something "illegal" on the net but rather the overarching powers given to the authorities which can easily be used to harass any citizen even without sufficient justification to back it up.

The act seems to go with the absolute assumption that government authorities are above moral reproach and will only act justly.
 
As some folks on the web say, the new amendments are neither good nor bad. They seems to be just and in line with what other governments across the world seem to be adopting. Of course, it's another matter that the vision of Bharat Sarkar's babus is going to be completely different from the way a digital native will think about the Internet. We are at ease with Internet and its chaos, utterly voyeuristic and dubious ways because we spend time in virtual world and are familiar with its culture. You can't expect the same from babus.

What is important is how the government acts in reality and there I see no big shift. Apart from some maverick decisions like ban on blogging sites taken by some individuals (read uber secretaries), Indian government has largely kept itself out of virtual affairs.

This may change in future and then we may know if this act is good or bad. Also if there are issues in future, expect the courts to get involved and once they have given their interpretation of the new act by holding it in front of constitutional rights, only then we will know how bad or good it is.
 
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