Date: 20/04/2023

Relevance: GS-2: Government Policies and Interventions for Development in various sectors and Issues arising out of their Design and Implementation; Proposed Digital India Bill, 2023.

Key Phrases: Child Safety, Proposed Digital India Bill, 2023, IT Act 2000, Safe Harbour, Data Principal, Web 2.0, Safety tools and Features, Societal cooperation, Public discourse.

Context:

• Over the last few years, India has witnessed a steady growth in internet access to children and the youth, which further accelerated during the covid lockdown as more and more children started spending time online for education, learning and entertainment.
  • As online interactions increase, more and more content is created and shared among people, helping them form new and wonderful connections. Sometimes, however, these interactions also make them vulnerable to harm.
  • Therefore, post the pandemic, online sexual abuse of children increased 400 times.
• Effective regulation and timely prosecution of perpetrators are critical to advance child safety on the internet.

Key Highlights:

• India today has 850 million internet users, compared to 5.5 million users in 2000.
• Currently, the Information Technology Act, 2000, is the core framework that regulates entities on the Internet.
  • A lack of provisions on user rights, and trust and safety, among other challenges, limit the IT Act and are why an updated version of the Act is needed.
• In drafting the Digital India Bill, examining the nuances of each regulatory area will be critical in protecting children from harm without undermining their access to the internet.

Importance of Safe harbour for child safety:

• The current IT Act accords safe harbour protection to online intermediaries whereby platforms are liable to take down user-generated content on receiving ‘actual knowledge’ of its illegality through a court or government order.
• Safe harbour – as prescribed under Section 79 of the IT Act, 2000 – is legal immunity that online intermediaries enjoy against content posted by users on their platforms.
  • The concept originally came from Section 230 of the United States’ Communications Decency Act, which has been termed “one of the foundational laws behind the modern Internet”.
• Safe harbour ensures that users can benefit from an open, free and safe internet, and protects people from the perils of mass censorship by intermediaries.
• Safe harbour is a crucial tenet for ensuring free speech on the Internet since platforms only have to act on speech that is deemed illegal.
• Increasing the accountability of online intermediaries is important.
  • However, overarching restrictions on civil rights and dilution of safe harbour impact user safety.
  • The experience of the US regime with respect to the impact of the SESTA-FOSTA legislation passed in 2018 is an apt example.
    • It has caused unreasonable restrictions on free speech and undermined safety.
• Irrespective of the means adopted by the platforms, intermediaries erring on the side of censorship are likely to disproportionately restrict marginalized voices and cause greater safety threats for them.

Need of Hour:

• Expanding Affirmative Technology-based Solutions :
  • Rather than adopting hard-touch punitive measures, the new IT Act must focus on expanding affirmative technology-based solutions to tackle child sexual abuse material (CSAM), such as use of keywords, hashes and PhotoDNA, and establish community hotlines for swift remedial measures.
    • The Supreme Court of India also recommended these measures in the Prajwala case of 2018.
  • Moreover, public-private partnerships to incentivize the growth of privacy-enabling technologies must be encouraged, and global best practices such as end-to-end encryption, which are critical for safety and privacy, should be enabled by India’s new legislation.
• Greater responsibility sharing and capacity enhancement:
  • The new law should focus on deploying streamlined grievance redressal processes that intermediaries must adopt to efficiently respond to online harm.
  • Processes for grading grievances according to the degree of harm posed are important, as those related to CSAM proliferation should be addressed on an immediate basis.
  • Tech companies must use cutting-edge technologies and build new ways to identify and take action against perpetrators.
  • Intermediaries should also make their terms of service easily comprehensible for children and create easily accessible mechanisms for them to lodge complaints.
  • Moreover, taking inspiration from other jurisdictions, emphasis should be placed on enhancing the capacity of law enforcement agencies to effectuate efficient investigation and timely prosecution.
    • The American Invest in Child Safety Act of 2021, which creates a mandatory fund of $5 billion and deploys 100 new Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in the US to respond to online sexual abuse, is an inspirational example.
• Sensitization and collaboration:
  • In addition to the efforts of intermediaries and the government, the significance of including children as equal participants in the fight against online child abuse cannot be emphasized enough.
    • For example, the Australian government is instituting a Youth Advisory Council, which will provide the administration feedback on online safety issues and measures to counter cyber-harm.
    • Such feedback and consultation mechanisms can be helpful in integrating vulnerable stakeholders in the processes of decision-making.
  • Many countries are also complementing these efforts through their engagement of school systems to raise public awareness on the issue.
    • It could be helpful to adapt such practices to Indian educational systems as well.
• Social media intermediaries should not shut down users’ posts or communications except in the interests of public order and to avoid legal consequences.
  • But care should be taken to ensure that requirements on intermediaries should not become needlessly onerous and punitive, which also vitiate the principle of safe harbour.
• There is a legitimate concern that the government is keener on regulating or taking down critical opinion or dissent in social media/news platforms than hate speech or disinformation, which in many cases has originated from representatives of the state.
• Safe harbour provisions that explicitly provided immunity to online services with respect to user-generated content had gone a long way in catalyzing the Net’s development.

Conclusion:

• Given the magnitude of services and opportunities that the internet has to offer, there is immense potential for children to learn and grow in the digital world.
  • However, this is only possible when the rapid proliferation of online harm is held in check.
  • Therefore, Collaborative efforts by the government, industry, civil society and child-safety experts are imperative.
• India’s new IT Act is an ideal focal point for all these efforts and collaborations for an internet that is wholly consistent with the rights of children.

Source: Live-Mint

Mains Question:

Q. What do you understand about the Safe Harbour provision for Internet intermediaries? Also, discuss impacts of the safe harbour on freedom of speech and safety of children in the digital age. (250 Words).