Interactive Marketing Blog

In the wake of recent terrorist attacks and such unfortunate sporadic events, Government of India’s (GOI) Information Technology (Amendment) Bill 2008 was issued which stipulated life imprisonment for those indulging in cyber terrorism. From now on, your email or the personal contents of your computer could soon be under Government scrutiny without your permission.

Times of India reports this:

…the bill also empowers the government to intercept or monitor any information through any computer resource in any investigation and block websites in national interest.

The IT (Amendment) Bill 2008 also says that dishonestly receiving stolen computer resource, identity theft, cheating by impersonation by using computer resource and violation of privacy will result in imprisonment upto three years apart from fine between Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. Transmitting material containing sexually explicit acts in electronic form would be punishable by imprisonment of upto five years along with a fine of upto Rs 10 lakh.

I believe that this is into a right direction but privacy is one issue which we have to deal with. Cyber Law expert, Pavan Duggal said that the bill was bound to infringe on civil liberties like right to privacy or right to anonymous communication with legitimate purposes, because no safeguards had been put in place to prevent such abuse. Calling the bill “a hurried reaction“, Duggal also said that the potential misuse of these powers stipulated by the bill for political gains can’t be ruled out.”

Though I believe it’s just a start but in due course of time, I won’t be surprised if we go China’s way of “Internet Censorship” or the recent news of Australia following suit.

So what is your take on the new Amendment or how much do we have to compromise if we go for internet censorship in India?