Sunday, June 21, 2009

Human Rights Project For Protecting Cyberspace Launched In India

Cyber laws are meant to protect people from the ills of information technology. What will happen if these cyber laws are used by the “State” to harass the citizens through illegal e-surveillance and eavesdropping, website censorships and blocking, online privacy violations, etc? There is a disturbing trend all over the World where the governments are formulating “draconian laws” to oppress the citizens.

In the Indian context, the same has been done by introducing the Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008 (IT Act, 2008). Fortunately, the same has not been “notified” yet and has not becoming part of the law of India. The unamended Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act, 2000) still governs the position.

However, this reckless episode on the part of Indian government has clearly shown its intentions and plans for the future. There is an emergent need of protecting human rights in the cyberspace.

Praveen Dalal, the leading techno-legal expert of India and managing partner of Perry4Law, has come up with a very good initiative titled “Human Rights Protection In Cyberspace”.

It is providing valuable suggestions to both government and netizens for a repression free Internet environment. To government it suggests the limits of its e-surveillance and censorship powers whereas to the netizens it provides the techno-legal measures to avoid and counter illegal and unreasonable censorship, e-surveillance and eavesdropping.

The resource though in its infancy stage seems to be very promising and worth exploring in the future. Have a safe, secure and surveillance free surfing.

SOURCE: ITVOIR