India Wants Google And Facebook To Censor User Content

E-surveillance in India is on rise. The latest trend is moving in the direction of surveillance of Internet traffic in India without constitutional procedure and safeguards. Civil liberties in cyberspace like speech and expression, right to privacy, etc are in grave danger in India.

Initially these Internet intermediaries did not pay much attention towards the draconian laws that Indian government have passed in the recent time. Experts like Praveen Dalal have been stressing upon dropping of unconstitutional amendments like information technology amendment act 2008. However, Internet intermediaries kept a mum keeping in mind their commercial interests.

Now things have taken really dangerous shape for all of the Internet stakeholders in India. In fact, Yahoo took Indian government to court over e-surveillance and more such litigations are expected in the near future.

Now Internet intermediaries in India like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and social media sites like Facebook have been asked to prescreen user content from India and to remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online.

Supreme Court of India is already dealing with privacy issues arising in the cyberspace. Now the only question that remains to be answered is will Supreme Court of India protect privacy rights of Indians in cyberspace?