New Delhi, December 24
You now have better reasons to think twice before writing or saying anything. The government just assumed the power to intercept your computer communications for investigation of offences. It can also access your phone records and letters “in the interest of national sovereignty”.
The Information Technology (IT) Amendment Bill 2008 passed hurriedly by the Lok Sabha yesterday gives the government powers to tackle cyber crimes and e-commerce frauds, but doesn’t quite address the issue of “breach of privacy.” It is silent on the issue of how personal information may be collected, processed, shared and used.
On the face it, the bill appears simple-seeking powers to handle new cyber crimes like publication of sexually explicit material in electronic form, video voyeurism, breach of confidentiality and leakage of data by intermediary and e-commerce frauds.
It makes a company handling sensitive personal data liable to pay up to Rs 5 crore in compensation if the company is found negligent in implementing reasonable security measures while using such data. It, however, does not hold intermediaries liable for third party data or content made available by them. It simply requires them to remove unlawful content upon awareness of such unlawfulness. The terms involved, say experts on techno-legal laws, have not been well defined.
Further, though the bill makes for compensation in case of unlawful loss or gain arising from unauthorised use of data, it doesn’t address privacy issues. For example, it does say that anyone copying or destroying data without permission of the owner must pay damages but it does not cover situations in which an employee with permission to access certain data misuses such data.
If that was less, the bill does not address concerns on child pornography despite the standing committee's suggestion to incorporate stringent punishment for the crime. Another of committee's suggestions-better clarity on how to handle unwanted commercial e-mails (spam) -has been left unaddressed.
“These issues warranted discussion but were conveniently pushed under the carpet. Some discussion on the bill happened in the upper house but in the lower house, the government rushed the bill by a voice vote,” said CPM leader Mohd Salim. The Left had yesterday protested government's indiscipline over handling serious legislative business, and even boycotted the closing ceremony of parliamentary session.
Earlier too in 2006 when the IT Amendment Bill was introduced, it was made public only after certain sections insisted for the same. Techno-legal experts have since been objecting to inherent flaws in the bill, which has now become a law.
