Indian Army can directly issue notices to remove online posts

NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Defence has notified a senior army officer — the additional directorate general (ADG) of strategic communication in the Indian army — as the “nodal officer” who can send notices, including takedown notices, to social media intermediaries about illegal content related to the Indian army and its components under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act.

Before this notification, the Indian Army relied on the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) to get unlawful content related to the army forced taken down or blocked, a person aware of the matter within the army said.

“Through this notification, the ADG (strategic communication) will be able to highlight cases and issue notices directly to intermediaries when we find unlawful content related to the Indian army. Then it is up to the intermediaries to assess what to do with that content,” the person said, requesting anonymity.

The impact of a lot of such content is immediate and going via MeitY takes much longer, the person stressed. “For example, if there is a Pakistan-run handle which is proliferating misinformation or disinformation, we should be in a position to issue notices directly to the intermediaries.”

For issues related to national security and where the image of the army is affected, a direct route to flag it to the companies is now available, the person added. Section 79 of the IT Act lays down conditions for an intermediary to claim safe harbour protections from liability for third party content.

Section 79(3)(b), however, says such protection is not available if the intermediary fails to remove or disable access upon being informed by the “appropriate” government or “its agency”.

Although Hindustan Times could not ascertain how many blocking orders or takedown notices have been issued to social media companies or other intermediaries to get content related to Indian army blocked or taken down, it has learnt that no new notices have been sent since the October 24 notification.

In February, the ministry of information and broadcasting, based on inputs from the defence ministry, Intelligence Bureau, and Jammu and Kashmir Police, had ordered Delhi-based news magazine, The Caravan, to take down a story on allegations of civilian abuse, torture and murder by the Indian army in Jammu under IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, an order that the magazine has since challenged in court.

Hindustan Times had reported on February 4 that as per legal experts, Section 79(3)(b) had created a grey area about who can direct intermediaries to remove content, for what reason, and if it can be challenged.

“Section 79(3)(b) erects a blocking process separate from Section 69A with a much lower threshold for issuing takedown notices and grants power to a much larger swathe of ministries, departments and law enforcement agencies,” Pavit Singh Katoch, general counsel at Inshorts, had told Hindustan Times in February.