The Madras High Court on Tuesday ordered notices to social media giants — Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp — seeking an explanation as to why they should not be included as respondents to a public interest litigation petition in which the court wanted to examine how far were they cooperating with the police in detecting cyber crimes. A Division Bench of Justices S. Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad took the decision after senior Central government standing counsel V. Venkatesan brought it to the notice of the court that they had a statutory obligation, under the Information Technology (Intermediaries guidelines) Rules of 2011, to provide information sought by the police.
The judges were told that the statutory rules framed under Sections 87 (2)(zg) read with 79 (2) of the Information Technology Act of 2000 defined the term ‘intermediary,’ with respect to any particular electronic message, to mean any person who on behalf of another person receives, stores or transmits that message or provides any service with respect to that message.
Rule 3 of the 2011 Rules requires intermediaries to follow due diligence while discharging their duties. They should also publish the rules and regulations, privacy policy and user agreement for access or usage of the intermediary’s computer resources by any person and warn the users against sharing harmful, blasphemous, obscene and objectionable content. Rule 3(4) imposes a duty upon the intermediaries to remove any objectionable content, that comes to their notice, within 36 hours and preserve the information as well as associated records for at least 90 days for investigation purposes. Further, sub clause (7) requires them to share information and provide assistance in investigating cyber crimes.
Mr. Venkatesan also told the court that the Centre was contemplating an amendment to the 2011 Rules to make the intermediaries more accountable to the investigating agencies . He said that a Personal Data Protection Bill was also on the anvil and that it would help in tracking and retrieving information shared on the social media. However, the police said the companies had deputed officials to assist in tracing criminals in serious cases like child pornography. However, those officials provided immediate assistance only in serious cases and did not cooperate in solving complaints of abuse through fake accounts.
