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New digital law may carry a fine for disinformation
The upcoming digital India bill may contain penalties for disinformation campaigns, or organised efforts to spread false or misleading information.
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The upcoming digital India bill may contain penalties for disinformation campaigns, or organised efforts to spread false or misleading information to manipulate public opinion, officials familiar with the matter said, adding that violations may lead to financial repercussions.
The central government is working on the digital India bill to replace the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, a move officials have said is born out of the need to overhaul laws and rules relating to technology, which has evolved significantly since the mainstay guardrails were put in.
According to a proposed draft seen by HT, any person who engages in action that promotes hatred, enmity hostility or directly or indirectly influences election outcomes will be liable for punishment for disinformation. The draft doesn’t, however, specify what the punishment will be.
To be sure, the draft will be fine-tuned further and released for public feedback before the Union cabinet hammers out the version that will go to parliament for approval.
Officials familiar with the matter said that the draft was evolving. “One of the proposals is to have financial penalties in order to deter disinformation campaigns,” one such official said on the condition of anonymity.
During consultations with stakeholders over the bill on May 22, union minister for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said: “India today has 830 million internet users, and is the world’s largest ‘digitally connected democracy’. The internet is largely governed by the 23-year-old IT Act, which is lacking in provisions on user rights, and trust and safety, among other challenges and is not well-equipped to deal with evolving, sophisticated forms of cybercrimes like doxxing, cyber stalking, and online trolling, etc”.
Disinformation has been a growing concern, especially since allegations that the 2016 US presidential election and the referendum for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union may in part have been influenced by disinformation operations.
According to the proposed draft, the provisions for disinformation will apply to “any person who alone or jointly” carries out “systematic activity for the purpose of deriving any direct or indirect gain or consideration” to publish or share anything that is “deceptive digital communication” or engages in actions that lead to the “promotion, spread, or endorsement of hatred, persecution, enmity, or hostility against individuals based on their protected characteristics”. The definition will also extend to acts “causing panic, disorder, or violence among the public… or exerting undue influence, either directly or indirectly, on the exercise of electoral rights, or causing damage, severe disruption, or substantial interference with critical information infrastructure or essential services”.
The bill, however, exempts people if they can demonstrate reasonable belief in the accuracy or public interest of their digital communications and if they took reasonable steps to verify their accuracy before engaging in any of the actions mentioned in subsection.
The proposed draft bill similarly seeks to penalise misinformation — this differs from disinformation in that this could be merely about lies without a concerted political, economic or security-related objective.
NEW HARMS TO BE OUTLINED?
The draft law also seeks to set up a new regulator, to be called the Digital India Authority, for enforcement of its provisions.
Other provisions likely to be under consideration include new forms of harms, that were hitherto not recognised in the IT Act. The draft identifies and details doxing, cyberstalking, gaslighting, cryptojacking, cyber mob-attacks and dog-whistling as user harms and leaves space for the government to recognise new user harms in the future.
If platforms allow these user harms to continue, they may be subject to penalties.
Experts have previously questioned the government’s ability to regulate these forms of user harm.
For instance, the draft defines doxing as “disclosing, by publication or transmission, of any information of an individual without their consent where such disclosure causes or is likely to cause harm to the individual”. Similarly, cyber-squatting is the acquisition of domain name over the Internet in bad faith to profit, mislead, destroy reputation, or deprive another from registering the same, if the domain name is similar, identical or confusingly similar to an existing trademark; the name of a person, or acquired without the right or intellectual property interests in it.
Publication of deep fakes, that is, realistic but fake information in digital form will also incur action from authorities.
Experts said tackling online harms is critical and new provisions to combat evolving crimes will be welcome. “However, it’s imperative that such provisions do not fall into colloquialism traps by using common parlance to freeze crimes but are specific yet dynamic enough to combat evolving cybercrimes,” said NS Nappinai, founder of Cybersaathi and Supreme Court lawyer.
She added that countering fake news and disinformation particularly with imminent elections again is critical. “Having a parliament enacted law would be the preferred option to tackle such crimes. Targeting organised fake news such as those intended to subvert elections or for cyber terrorism would be preferable to open ended provisions that may result in abuse as was the case with the struck down section 66A of IT Act,” according to Nappinai.
