[Child pornography] Cybercrime portal's purpose defeated if complainants have to run around after filing complaint: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that the purpose behind creating a dedicated web portal for reporting cybercrime would be defeated if the complainants have to subsequently run around to follow up the complaint [In Re: Prajwala Letter / Videos of Sexual Violence and Recommendations and anr]..A bench of Justices BR Gavai and Vikram Nath opined that the portal should not merely be a complaint centre but a comprehensive mechanism with central supervision and coordination among State authorities. "We need people to specially deal with this, cybercrime cannot be based on one place. Complete setup should be there with central monitoring. Portal's concept is defeated if complainants have to run around ... [it] should not just be a complaint centre ... There is no point of the complaints going into a black hole," Justice Nath remarked. .The Court was hearing a case initiated suo motu in 2015 based on a letter written by an NGO Prajwala to the then Chief Justice of India HL Dattu. The letter/complaint was sent along with a pen drive of two rape videos on YouTube. The Court had subsequently taken suo motu cognisance of the letter and explored the possibility of blocking videos of sexual assault and child pornography.In March 2017, the Supreme Court had constituted a committee to assist and advise the Court on the feasibility of ensuring that videos depicting gang rape, child pornography and rape are not made available on the internet. WhatsApp had in 2018 told the Supreme Court that the removal of objectionable content relating to child pornography from the platform was “not possible” on account of end-to-end encryption.The Central government had later proposed certain actions that can be taken by Google and other similar entities to curtail circulation of such content. These proposals included setting up monitoring tools powered by Artificial Intelligence to facilitate auto-deletion of illegal content, and appointment of contact officers and escalation officers based out of India, among others.The suggestions also included setting up of a round-the-clock mechanism to handle requisition of law enforcement agencies to look into complaints in this regard, as well as quick disposal of such requisitions to ensure deletion of unlawful content.Specifically, the Court had directed that the launch of an Online Cyber Crime reporting portal be expedited in this regard. The Court had also directed all these entities to submit a draft action plan/SOP for the implementation of these suggestions while making a note that all parties were in agreement that child pornography needs to be “stamped out”.In May 2018, the Court had imposed costs of Rs 1 lakh each on Yahoo, Facebook Ireland, Facebook India, Google India, Google Inc., Microsoft and WhatsApp for their lethargic response to disclose steps taken to curb the circulation of child pornography on their platforms..During the hearing of the matter on Tuesday, Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati took the Court through the compliance reports of social media intermediaries in line with the IT Rules. Amicus Curiae Aparna Bhat said that reducing the matter to compliance with such rules was not sufficient, since the issue was both about prevention as well as action against perpetrators who circulate such videos. "They have only largely, made a portal that is not functioning like how it should have. The cybercrime portal is an eyewash given the magnitude of the problem," she said. Bhat elaborated on how the portal currently has 'jurisdictional roadblocks', giving the example of a complainant being asked to go to Telangana to give a statement. She also pointed out that the committee formed had last met in 2021. The top court in its order asked the Central government to organise another meeting of the committee to look into the implementation of the proposals that were agreed upon by consensus.The matter will be heard next after eight weeks..[Follow our coverage of today's hearing]