Digital Democracy

 Information Technology Rules, 2021 : A Jolt to Digital Rights and Trust i Pauly Muricken https://www.indiancurrents.org/article-information-technology-rules-2021--a-jolt-to-digital-rights-and-trust-pauly-muricken-458.php 14 Jun 2021 

The new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 fails to answer these penetrating questions -   the extent of State restrictions? Can it go beyond what is legitimate and necessary in a Democratic Society? Can Intermediaries/ Service providers be totally deprived of the benefits of global norm on safe harbour protection? How do you balance these competing rights? in a viable manner...

The Rules facilitate surveillance.. It has a chilling effect on free expression and access to information. Rules go against the precept that online content could be removed from intermediary platforms only by reasoned government or court order. This protects the platforms from liability and acts as a check on frivolous take-down demands.

As in the physical space, cyber security shall not come at the expense of cyber privacy.  Reforms are necessary, particularly on the anvil of digital security and harm principles. But any reform or lawmaking in this arena should be based on the principles of rule of law; legitimate purposes; oversight by legislative, judicial and other bodies like independent Ombudsman; and transparency in a free society.

A glance of the Rules would reveal that the liability regime envisaged do not match with the current international norms and jurisprudential consciousness.

 Is Digital India a Failure? Are there Gaps in UPI, ONDC and OCEN? Detailed Analysis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnEyFSToGbg
Think School Today QR codes EVERYWHERE, chaiwalas accept digital payments, and as of 2025, more than 2 billion people in India have a bank account with UPI transactions crossing ₹23 TRILLION!! But it pains me to say that after the phenomenal success of UPI, there are gaps, failures and glorified announcements that the media forgot to follow up on!!! And 2 of these glorified initiatives are the ONDC and OCEN initiative!!! These 2 initiatives have failed so badly that ONDC's app is worse than a college student’s first-year project and OCEN has been ignored by the biggest banking players of the country!!
we (think school)ourselves made a video on how revolutionary this initiative was!!! 
Where are the biggest gaps in UPI?
Why are ONDC and OCEN slowing down?
And what are the lessons that we need to learn from this slowdown of ONDC and OCEN!!

GoI issues final notice to Twitter in connection with new IT rules compliance. Govt warns of legal consequences if compliance ignored . https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/technology/govt-issues-final-notice-to-twitter-to-comply-with-it-rules/2265717/   June 05, 2021 "The government on Saturday issued a notice to Twitter giving it one last chance to “immediately” comply with the new IT rules and warned that failure to adhere to the norms will lead to the platform losing exemption from liability under the IT Act.

"Twitter has not informed about the details of the Chief Compliance Officer as required under the Rules,” it said.

"Also, resident grievance officer and the nodal contact person nominated by the company is not an employee of Twitter Inc in India as prescribed in the rules, the ministry said and added that office address of Twitter Inc as mentioned by the company “is that of a law firm in India, which is not as per the rules”."

LIABILITY OF ISPS & INTERMEDIARY IN INDIA https://indiancaselaws.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/cyber-defamation-liabilities-of-internet-service-providers-isps-and-intermediary.pdf

 As per Section 79 of the IT Act, ISPs are not liable for any third party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted by them so long as-

1.their function is limited to only providing access to communication system;

2.they do not-(a)initiate transmission;(b)select the receiver of the transmission, and(c)select or modify the information contained in the transmission

3.they exercise duediligence in their duties and adhere to any guidelines which may be prescribed

However, ISPs can be held liable in the following situations-

1.If they have conspired, abetted or induced in the unlawful act,
2.If, they fail to expeditiously remove or disable access to any information, data or communication link upon receiving the knowledge or on being notified by appropriate Government agency that such information, data or communication link is being used to commit unlawful act without interfering with the evidence

Are we going to see a slew of laws and rules to "regulate" fact checkers? I can bet that the powers that be will frame the laws in such a way that even private fact checkers, like Alt News will be brought into the fray. Two weeks ago, when they factchecked and showed teh difference between the tool kit logo, and the fake one put out by the BJP, the attention of the public was diverted to the power of these "western" IT companies to label content as Manipulated data. They wanted "transparency..
If for example BOT fact checkers algorithm is transparent, then those who have access to it, like the government will be able to bye pass the logic. Many of you would have noticed that in many trolling comments, you will find strange spellings word break, punctuation marks.. all these are method to avoid the checks of the BOTS.

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/covid-vaccine-facebook-takes-down-pib-factcheck-coronavirus-death-7344813 The Blocking of the PIB fact check on the claim attributed to Luc Montagnier that those who get vaccinated would die within two years and the unblocking by FB & Insta has also led to " the IT Ministry raising concerns about the lack of transparency in the appointment of fact-checkers. In internal meetings with other government departments who had flagged the issue, the Ministry is learnt to have assured the officials of being “aware of the issue”.

“Both the platforms claim to have robust fact-checking mechanisms in place. When we reached out to them on this, they said that this was done inadvertently since a machine flagged it as false news. We have asked them as to why it was not cross-checked by a human fact checker,” an IT Ministry official said."

Staya Hindi discusses the changing relationship between social media and the parties. https://youtu.be/Fx1XpEcNM-A?t=1245