‘Furnish report on info sought from social media firms’

A division bench comprising Justice S Manikumar and Justice Subramonium Prasad passed the direction on a plea that sought for a direction to the Centre to link Aadhaar with email IDs and social media platforms for detecting cybercrimes. The bench also directed Advocate General Vijay Narayan to ascertain from the law enforcement agencies whether the basic subscriber information provided by these firms was enough to detect and prevent crimes.

Based on an earlier direction, the Chief Secretary had convened a meeting of the private firms and law enforcement agencies, and had sought the former to have India interface mechanism and a suitable official in the country to liaise with senior State level nodal officer. The other deliverables decided included providing training to personnel for mutual clarity on ‘community standards’ and usage of correct language to access information quickly, DGP to appoint 40 nodal officers covering all TN districts and train them on acceptable process for seeking information, and hold quarterly meetings to further strengthen the exchange between the two.

The bench also recorded the submission that the firms would provide certificates under Section 65B of Indian Evidence Act, and the modalities and process to obtain the certificate would be worked out by the companies and government agencies.

It was also resolved to seek the finalisation of the Information Technology [Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment)] Rules, draft of which has been published by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), which may address and give legal backing to some of the decisions taken in the meeting.

The other medium-term deliverables included finalising early the process of Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty being taken up at the country level, and the firms should take steps to address the technical issues raised by the agencies on content removal by sharing the originator identity. The plea has been posted for further hearing to June 27.