Government Moves to Access and Trace all ‘Unlawful’ Content Online

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on December 21, 2018 has discussed a draft of The Information Technology [Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment) Rules] 2018, according to which social media platforms will soon have to end the complete encryption system and remove any “unlawful content” for the sake of the country’s security.

• The five-page draft rules were discussed Meit with others from the Cyber Law Division, and representatives of Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, ShareChat, SEBI and The Internet Service Providers Association of India.

New Amendment Proposed

• Tracking and Removal of Unlawful Content: The proposed amendments to rules under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act (Rule 3(9)), make it mandatory for online platforms to “proactively” deploy technology, which would enable a ferreting of content seen as “unlawful”. They also require end-to-end encryption to be broken so that the origin of messages can be traced.
• Traceability Requirement: The insertion of a new Rule 3(4) activates a pro-active monthly notification across intermediaries to warn users repeatedly. Rule 3(5), which will introduce a “traceability requirement”, will in effect require a platform to break end-to-end encryption and introduce systems for retaining data and information specific to each bit of data, including WhatsApp messages.

Duration: The draft amendments envisage that online platforms will keep a record of “unlawful activity” for a period of “180 days”, double the 90 days in the older version.