Parliament panel suggests steps to monitor cyber frauds
The standing committee is considering a separate but related issue on anti-competitive practices by Big Tech firms
The government is considering suggestions from a parliamentary committee to set up a centralised Cyber Protection Authority (CPA), expanding capacity of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), and requiring mobile phone makers to allow whitelisting or blacklisting of apps offering loans, three people aware of the development said.
Also read: Jaishankar's 21-minute statement after Parliament disruption: ‘Partisan politics…’
According to these people, the parliamentary standing committee on finance carried out detailed discussions with multiple stakeholders and came up with several suggestions in the ‘cyber security and rising incidence of cyber/white collar crimes’ report.
The proposed five-point strategy includes a more dynamic and proactive regulatory framework, a new empowered ‘Cyber Protection Authority’, a responsive consumer grievance redressal mechanism; strengthen enforcement at Centre and states; and achieve closer global cooperation.
The recommendations come against the backdrop of growing concerns of people being harassed by dodgy loan applications, which in many cases have driven users to suicide by their coercive recovery methods.
“There are rising cases of cybercrimes. They are difficult to handle because of being anonymous and borderless. The government is considering proposals of a parliamentary panel to tackle such crimes,” one of the people said, asking not to be named.
“The government will certainly consider these recommendations,” a second person added.
The stakeholders who were part of the discussions included ministries of home, finance and electronics and IT, as well as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), public and private sector banks, key players in the digital payment ecosystem, and Big Tech firms such as Google and Apple, which host mobile applications on their app stores.
The concerns also spill over to a number of illegal mobile applications available for download from application stories for quick loans or investments in crypto-assets, posing risks to such people, the second person added. “Hence, there is a continuous need to blacklist and whitelist apps instead of the current approach of firefighting”.
“The panel proposed to have a regulatory directive mandating app stores to share exhaustive metadata and other information about all apps hosted on their platform,” he said, adding that this data would help the regulator monitor vulnerability and prevent frauds.
Such an approach would also require revamped regulatory framework with a centralised and empowered Cyber Protection Authority or CPA.
The standing committee is also considering a separate but related issue on anti-competitive practices by Big Tech firms, with dominant players often accused of misusing their market position. In this regard, the ministry of corporate affairs said it was considering a new law to put in “ex-ante” guardrails.
Ex-ante regulations, or harder than usual guardrails, lay down stricter limits on how the sector must function.
A third person said the government has informed the parliamentary panel that it concurs with its proposal on the need of “ex-ante” laws that will allow regulators to pre-empt anti-competitive practices of large digital platforms such as Google, Amazon, and Flipkart as digital markets pose “peculiar challenge” by the “winner-take-all” situation.
Also read: Centre has over 636,000 cases pending in courts: Union law minister tells Parl
The government may take some more weeks and have a ‘whole of the government’ approach to finalise a comprehensive draft digital competition law, the second person said.
A committee headed by the ministry of corporate affairs secretary is holding detailed deliberations on the matter and is expected to submit its recommendations by July 5.
Earlier this month, in a meeting held between officials of ministry of electronics and IT and MCA, concerns were raised regarding Systematically Important Digital Intermediaries (SIDIs) or ‘gatekeepers’, the third official said.
SIDIs are dominant players in the digital ecosystem who may influence competition often called the ‘gatekeepers’.
The Standing Committee on Finance, in its report -- Anti-Competitive Practices by Big Tech Companies -- on December 22, 2022 had said that the government must identify and monitor SIDIs in digital markets that can negatively influence competitive conduct and proposed to categorise them on the basis of their revenue, market capitalisation, number of active businesses and end users. read