Time to overhaul Article 69A
Recently, the government used the provisions of Article 69A to block access to 43 applications of Chinese origin, including the likes of AliExpress, Alipay Cashier and CamCard
- Dec 2, 2020,
- Updated Dec 2, 2020 12:31 AM IST
Today's intensely interconnected world is quite like the one depicted in George Orwell's dystopian social science fiction, 1984, where Big Brother knew everything that was happening. Immense amounts of data - text, images and video - are generated every day. While enterprises use the data to develop newer applications, some content poses problems for governments.
That's where the provisions of the Article 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, are used by the government to keep a check on online content. Article 69A allows the central government to block access to information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource if it believes the content impacts the security, defence, sovereignty and integrity of India. Other reasons include preserving friendly relations with foreign countries, public order, or preventing instigation of an offence.
The problem lies in the fact that there is no clear cut definition of what impacts the security and sovereignty of the country. Much of this is arbitrary and uses the emergency provision to shroud it in secrecy. In fact, there have been multiple instances of the government forcing Twitter to remove content related to Kashmir. As if all this was not enough, the government is looking to regulate OTT platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. All this amounts to just online censorship in another name.
Today's intensely interconnected world is quite like the one depicted in George Orwell's dystopian social science fiction, 1984, where Big Brother knew everything that was happening. Immense amounts of data - text, images and video - are generated every day. While enterprises use the data to develop newer applications, some content poses problems for governments.
That's where the provisions of the Article 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, are used by the government to keep a check on online content. Article 69A allows the central government to block access to information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource if it believes the content impacts the security, defence, sovereignty and integrity of India. Other reasons include preserving friendly relations with foreign countries, public order, or preventing instigation of an offence.
The problem lies in the fact that there is no clear cut definition of what impacts the security and sovereignty of the country. Much of this is arbitrary and uses the emergency provision to shroud it in secrecy. In fact, there have been multiple instances of the government forcing Twitter to remove content related to Kashmir. As if all this was not enough, the government is looking to regulate OTT platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. All this amounts to just online censorship in another name.