SECTION 69A OF THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ACT

Twitter moved the Karnataka high court seeking to set aside multiple orders of the central government as well as to change their directions to identify specific violative content and then impose a blanket ban on an individual account.

Current issue

• Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued an order to take down certain posts from Twitter under section 69A of the IT Act as the company has failed to comply with the directions on multiple occasions.
• As per the Twitter transparency report for January to June 2021, India accounted for 11%of the overall legal requests received globally by the micro-blogging platform for moderating access to certain content.
• Twitter submitted a list of 80 accounts and tweet that it had blocked based on a request from the government in 2021 and it also claims that the basis on which multiple accounts and posts have been flagged by the Ministry are either overbroad and arbitrary or disproportionate.
• Supreme court ruling in The Superintendent, Central Prison Fatehgarh vs Ram Manohar Lohia (1960) has held restrictions made in the public interest must possess a reasonable connection to the objective being achieved.
• Some of the content flagged by the Ministry may pertain to official accounts of political parties, blocking which could be violative of the right to free speech according to Twitter.

What is Section 69A of the IT Act?

• Section 69A of the IT Act empowers the government to restrict access to any content in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of the country, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order. All directions to restrict information or content in circulation must be recorded in the writing.
• Social media intermediaries failing to comply with the regulations are liable to be monetarily penalized along with an imprisonment term which may extend up to seven-year.
• Section 69A enables the centre to ask any agency of the government, or any intermediary, to block access to the public of any information generated, transmitted, received, or stored on any computer resource
• The intermediaries include network service, internet service, provider, telecom service provider, network service providers, search engines, online payment sites, online auctions sites, online marketplace, cyber cafés, etc.
• In the past government used section 69A of the IT Act to block 59 Chinese apps like Tik Tok, UC Browser, Cam Scanner, etc. after the clash between Indian and Chinese troops in Ladakh.
• While Section 69 A of the IT Act, provides power to the government, the procedure to do such restrictions is listed in the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguard for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2019.

Other related law

• Information technology (IT) Act 2000: it covers all ‘intermediaries’ who play a role in the use of computer resources and electronic records.
• Section 66 of IT Act: in the Shreya Singhal vs Union of India case the supreme court has struck down section 66 of the IT Act under which posting offensive comments online was a crime punishable by a court.
• Section 95 and 96 of CRPC: section 95 talks about the power to declare certain publications forfeited and to issue search warrants for the same while section 96 allows for an application to the High Court to set aside the declaration of forfeiture.
• In the Anuradha Bhasin vs Union of India case the Supreme Court had said that when access to the internet is restricted, reason must be given and it also stated that government-imposed restrictions on the freedom of expression and assembly, fair reason must be made available to the public and affected parties can challenge in a court of law in case of arbitrary use.

Thus, the rules impacting the fundamental rights must be equipped with proper accountability with proper parliamentary or judicial oversight to check the misuse of the section by the government.