Supreme Court urges Centre to implement slew of recommendations to remove child porn, rape videos from internet

The Supreme Court has urged the Central government to implement the recommendations made by the court-appointed committee to ensure that videos depicting rape, gang rape and child pornography are not available for circulation on internet..A Bench of Justice Madan B. Lokur and UU Lalit passed the order in the suo moto case, which the court is hearing, after it received a letter from NGO-Prajwala to the effect that videos of sexual violence were being circulated on internet..An order was passed on March 22, 2017 constituting a Committee to assist and advise the Court on the feasibility of ensuring that videos depicting rape, gang rape and child pornography are not available for circulation on internet..The Committee after extensive deliberations with various stakeholders and experts including representatives of WhatsApp, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc. submitted a comprehensive report to the court..The Committee made many proposals and all the parties agreed to certain recommendations based on the proposals made by the committee..The Court proceeded to set out the proposals. Some of those proposals are:.The search engines expand the list of key words, which may possibly be used by a user to search for CP content.These key words should also be in Indian languages and vernacular search.These key words should be expanded to cover RGR content.Creating an administrative mechanism for reporting and maintenance of data in IndiaEither within the CBI, or under the aegis of the MHA, a cell must be set up to deal with these crimesA hash bank for RGR content be created (under the charge and control of Ministry of Home Affairs, GoI or through authorities or NGOs authorized by it)GoI to formulate specific parameters for identifying RGR content to ensure expeditious identification and removalA reporting mechanism must be created at a Central level, preferably with the CBI (in view of their role and special access) to also receive information of any CP/RGR content being circulated in the social media or any other platform over the internet;The solution lies in proactively identifying rogue sites by an independent agency which can identify sites that contains CP and RGR content and blocking these sites. To prevent the circulation of subject imagery, Government can block any additional sites/applications if they do not remove such contents of their own. MHA/designated LEA can be empowered to directly order Indian ISPs through DoTThe Government, through an appropriate agency setup a VPN to receive the NCMEC reports for uploading of CP from India. As conveyed by NCMEC, there were more than one hundred thousand reports belonging to India. Law enforcement agencies should initiate legal action against uploaders.User Authentication: Create a mechanism where users who seek to upload an image/video, falling within the subject content, using the pre-identified key words, are put to a more rigorous verification process which would have them believe that they would be traced.The Court proceeded to urge the Centre and all the parties to implement the recommendations at the earliest and submit a report to the court..“We expect the parties including the Government of India to abide by the recommendations on which there is consensus and to try and implement them at the earliest. We make it clear that any information that is based on or is pursuant to the proposals and recommendations to the Government of India will be kept confidential so as not to reveal the technology used by the participating service providers. The Government of India will prepare a status report on implementation of the recommendations and place it before us in a sealed cover before the next date of hearing”.The case is now listed for hearing on December 11..Read the order below..Click here to download the Bar & Bench Android App