Doxing: Delhi High Court orders take down of tweets revealing identity of woman who posted comments critical of UP CM

The Delhi High Court recently ordered X (earlier Twitter) to take down a bunch of tweets revealing private and professional details of a woman who had made a critical comment about Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath [SS v Squint Neon & Ors]..In an order passed on February 28, 2024, Justice Prathiba M Singh said that the plaintiff is a professional woman against whom offensive, derogatory, and defamatory comments are being made on the internet and, therefore, the offending tweets have to be removed.Justice Singh also said that the though case does not fully constitute a suit against 'doxing’ as plaintiff's identity was not completely anonymous but that does not mean that she can be harassed or trolled on the internet in a manner to cause her harassment or embarrassment especially, by writing to her employer. Doxing is a form of cyberbullying that uses sensitive or secret information of a person for his/her harassment, exposure, financial harm or other exploitation. On January 17, 2024, the plaintiff had posted an anonymous tweet about an interview of the Adityanath where he answered a question in response to the non-attendance of Shankaracharyas at the consecration ceremony of Ram Temple at Ayodhya.“Iski bhi lanka lagegi bahut ghamand ho gaya hai is chhote fenku ko,” she wrote.According to the plaintiff-woman, from the very next day, she started facing a lot of objectionable content against her on the social media platforms. These tweets revealed her real name as well as workplace and photograph..In its order dated February 22, 2024, the Court noted that the woman's original posts on the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister has already been taken down and she has said that she does not wish to make any further comments on the political leader.It ordered that the offending tweets against the plaintiff shall be taken down and she should be informed about the basic subscriber information of these X accounts.“In the present case, since the Plaintiff’s posts are stated to have been taken down it would suffice to direct that the five URLs (attached as Annexure 1) be taken down by platform ‘X’-Defendant No.9. In addition, Defendant No.9 i.e., ’X’ shall reveal the basic subscriber information of the alleged tweets of Defendant Nos. 1 to 7 to the Plaintiff within one week. Defendant No.10 i.e., ‘Google LLC’ shall reveal, within one week, the details of Defendant No.8 in whose favour the said Gmail address is registered. The information disclosed shall be used only for the purpose of legal proceedings.”The offending tweets were made by the X accounts under the names Squint Neon, Ambedkarite Hindu, 01z1z, Amit, Rishav Singh, Pandit Jason Bourne, Raja Mc and Sandesh K..Court’s views on doxing.It was the plaintiff's case that the offending tweets amount to doxing. The Court considered the case and observed that her tweet was not anonymous as it bears the same initials as her name and her photograph had also been posted as the display picture of her X handle.Hence, it said that the case might not fully fall under the scope of doxing.However, does not mean that she can be harassed or trolled on the internet in a manner to cause her harassment or embarrassment especially, by writing to her employer. .The Court further observed that acts of doxing if permitted to go on unchecked could result in violation of right to privacy and people cannot be left remediless in such situation just because doxing has not been defined in the Indian legal landscape or been made a statutory offence in India. “It is further observed that even if doxing is not used as a tool for sexual harassment, these factors also contribute to the harms of having personal information revealed on the Internet as there is disclosure/ public release of an individual’s private, sensitive, personal information. The omnipresent nature of the internet, coupled with easy access to technology has ensured that a person’s real and virtual lives are merged. Consequently, whatever happens online has very real life i.e., offline repercussions for a subject. The internet affords a comparatively large audience, thereby statistically increasing the chances of any violence occurring in response to Doxing, and so when a subject’s information is floated on air for the entire world to peruse, especially in certain serious situations threats and violent calls may crop up from any part of the world.”The Court said that doxing is different from other forms of cyber-bullying and cyber-harassment, as the risk of putting the subject in physical danger increases exponentially.“When a potential offender gets hold of the subject’s personal information, such as where she lives, it becomes easier for him to translate online threats into real life violence. On the other hand, however, any information which is openly available or accessible is used for legitimate purposes, there can be no complaint. Thus, the Court has to strike a delicate balance between access to open information and safeguarding of privacy,” Justice Singh observed.She added.“Be that as it may, aggrieved parties/ individuals in cases of Doxing cannot be rendered remedy-less, because the individual would have suffered an injury as the privacy of the individual is breached. The dearth of literature on this subject in the Indian Context does not prevent this Court from resorting to the law of torts to balance the scales of justice as also to provide reliefs under the laws of privacy…”.Advocates Raghav Awasthi, Mukesh Sharma, Lohitaksha Shukla and Kunal Tiwari appeared for the plaintiff .Advocates Deepak Gogia and Aadhar Nautiyal represented X.Google was represented through advocates Neel Mason, Vihan Dang, Pragya Jain and Aditya Mathur. .[Read Order]