Govt.'s proposed draft rules to curb 'unlawful content' on social media falls in line with court orders

The government has already drawn flak from the Opposition over its move to curb the "social media contents".

The Opposition is alleging that the government is trying to expand its surveillance.

However in July 17, 2018 order in the Tehseen S. Poonawalla case, the court has given unlimited discretion power to the Centre to stop/curb “irresponsible and explosive messages on various social media platforms, which have a tendency to incite mob violence and lynching of any kind".

On Dec 6, Justice Madan B. Lokur-led Supreme Court bench said as quoted by The Hindu, "everybody is agreed that child pornography, rape and gang-rape videos and objectionable material need to be stamped out," mentioning the names of online giants like Google, Facebook, Youtube, Whatsapp.

Clause (1) of Rule 3 of the draft Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Amendment Rules, 2018, states that no person can host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update or share information which is pornographic, paedophilic, racially or ethnically objectionable, invasive of another's privacy harms minors in anyway, The Hindu reported.

Days ago, the union government authorised ten central agencies to intercept, monitor and decrypt “any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer”.

Ten central agencies, including the NIA and CBI, can now intercept, monitor and decrypt “any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer".