The govt recently shared a new set of draft rules with social media platforms, but the companies have raised several objections to the proposals.
New Delhi: Internet majors like Google and Facebook may not agree to give the government full information about what users do on social media platforms, sources have told ThePrint.
A series of meetings meeting between the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), platforms like Google, Facebook,WhatsApp, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, ShareChat, and tech company lobby groups like The Internet Service Providers Association of India and the Internet and Mobile Association of India, has ended inconclusively.
On 21 December, the MeitY shared with these stakeholders a confidential draft called ‘The Information Technology [Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment) Rules] 2018’. These proposed amendments could replace the 2011 rules, and it is learnt that the union home ministry also gave inputs on the draft.
The proposed rules ask ‘intermediary’ platforms to break encryption on user-shared content while asking companies to have India-based incorporated business entities and grievance officers. Messaging apps like WhatsApp and social media platforms qualify as ‘intermediaries’ according to Indian laws.
The companies have until 7 January to submit their feedback to MeitY additional secretary Pankaj Kumar, who deals with cyber law.
“India-based social media platforms like ShareChat may not have a problem, but for WhatsApp and Telegram, which have end-to-end encryption, and for other Chinese and American companies in India, these rules may be a problem,” a source present at the meetings told ThePrint.
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Several objections
The companies have raised several objections to the proposed rules.
1. The draft asks them to “enable tracing out…originator of information on its platform as may be required by government agencies”.
On a messaging service like WhatsApp, this could be a problem because its encryption means not even WhatsApp knows what content is being shared on its platform. Having to break the encryption on its platform may lead to breaking WhatsApp’s user trust as well.
However, Australia has also recently passed a law which may force companies to break encryption on user-generated messages.
2. The draft also poses rules for intermediaries with “more than fifty lakh users in India”, but stakeholders feel this is vague, since it doesn’t specify whether it means 50 lakh users based on the number of app downloads, or monthly users, or the total user base.
The stakeholders feel the qualification should be changed to 10 lakh users in India per month, so that it captures even newer foreign apps, including TikTok, Kwai, and Bigo Live, which recently become massively popular.
3. The draft wants intermediaries “with more than fifty lakh users in India” or those which are “in the list of intermediaries specifically notified by the government of India”, to be “incorporated under the Companies Act” of 1956 or 2013.
It also wants such intermediaries to have a “permanently registered office in India with physical address”, and to have a nodal officer, and another senior officer for “24×7 coordination with law enforcement agencies”.
This may be problematic for any foreign app companies with a large numbers of users in India, but not incorporated in the country.
4. The draft also asks intermediaries to use “technology based automated tools” to identify and remove “unlawful information”. This refers largely to technology tools like machine learning (ML), so that computers can automatically detect information.
This could be a problem for newer platforms which are unable to build their own proprietary applications of such expensive technologies.
In addition, ML requires large amounts of data to better detect objectionable content. Newer platforms may not have as much data in their storage as an older platform, hence limiting the accuracy of their content detection tools.
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