ARTICLE 19 along with 18 other international human rights organisations has sent a a letter to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India to withdraw the amendments recently proposed to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 (IT Rules 2021).
The signatories of the letter commended the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on the initiative to amend the IT Rules 2021, and commence a process of consultation on the proposed amendments, according to a press release issued on Thursday.
The letter expressed deep concerns on the existing IT Rules 2021 and its subsequent proposed amendments as it will promote overzealous content moderation practices, incentivize the use of automated content controls, and refer to broad categories of information that are vague and open to abuse.
Faruq Faisel, Regional Director of ARTICLE 19 South Asia said: “In India, there is a growing tendency for government to control freedom of expression and the free flow of information. Indian IT Rules 2021 is a direct threat to the rights to freedom of expression and privacy guaranteed under the Indian Constitution and international human rights laws signed by India. The rules should be amended to address the loopholes of the 2021 text. However, these new revisions add alarming concerns to the existing restrictive provisions in the rules.”
Activists, human rights advocates, and civil society organisations repeatedly raised major concerns over the IT Rules 2021 including serious privacy concerns, mainly related to an expansion of mandatory data retention and traceability requirements, which would undermine end-to-end encryption and have a chilling effect on the rights to expression and association.
The concern includes model of grievance redressal, oversight, and media regulation in Part III of the rules that allows for unprecedented and unconstitutional state control over the press and online news.
The model of conditional immunity for internet intermediaries would create differential and extensive obligations for ‘significant social media intermediaries’, but which obligations may be at the government's discretion extended to ‘any intermediary’.
Restrictions on online content are set forth directly by the executive, with no legislative debate and based on extremely vague and overbroad terms.
Finally, there would be no judicial oversight as well as check and balance for removal or blocking of content.
Amendments to the IT Rules, 2021 are crucial to ensure that the rules are democratic, constitutional and safeguard the fundamental rights of Indian citizens.
However, the amendments currently proposed seek instead to further curtail rights of people through imposing additional due diligence requirements on intermediaries that could result in over-censorship, impractical timeframes for resolution of complex grievances related to rights and the formation of an appellate authority that is not independent of the executive.
The signatories urged MeitY and the Government of India to suspend the implementation of the IT Rules, 2021, and commit to reviewing them entirety to ensure that the rights to freedom of expression, information, association and privacy, are protected and strengthened.
They urged to withdraw the proposed draft amendments to the IT Rules, 2021 and conduct a sustained, meaningful and participatory consultation with the relevant stakeholders and public at large.
