Touchy Indians try to cut online risk to religion, reputation

Lack of clarity in the legal system combined with the inability of the law-enforcement agencies has prompted the Indian goverment to seek user information on Facebook - and other social media - with the aim to restrict access or block content. India is second, after the US, in seeking such information.

From India, Facebook received a total of 4,559 requests for information on 5,958 users and accounts. Of this, Facebook said that 50.87 per cent of requests saw some data being produced. India is the second largest market for the social networking giant with 100 million users on board.

The increasing interest of governments across the globe in accessing user information is not restricted to Facebook alone. Social networking platforms like Twitter, Google's properties - YouTube, Blogs, Web Search Dropbox - and others all have seen an increase in demand from government agencies in seeking user information.

Unlike Google's Transparency Report, Facebook does not provide the details of the nature of the request. Facebook said: "We restricted access in India to a number of pieces of content reported primarily by law enforcement officials and the India Computer Emergency Response Team, under local laws prohibiting criticism of a religion or the state."

A look at Google's Transparency Report shows that issues that received the most request for restricting access are defamation, religious offensive comments, adult content that impacted users' privacy, hate speech, privacy and security and instigating violence, among others.

Google reports requests received from government under two segments: Courts and Executive, Police etc. It seems the executive, the police arm of the government, have been much more active is seeking information from the search giant.

For instance, defamation that tops the list in terms of requests from police and executive in India. Over 30 per cent requests of removal came under this segment. Since July 2010, about 27 per cent of this was requested by the police and the executive. Just about seven per cent came from courts.

Cyber law expert Pavan Duggal points out to a simple aspect of the lacuna in Indian laws. "Defamation is a loose canon with every individual a global transporter, receiver of information. The word defamation has no mention in the Indian IT Act. The government did include it in the IT rules in 2011."

The defamation banner have used in India quite often. An example of this finding is the arrest of two girls in Mumbai in 2012 for their Facebook post questioning the shutdown in the city for Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackrey's funeral.

A more recent example is of riots breaking out in Pune, after some comments were made against Shivaji, the Maratha ruler, on Facebook.

"The law enforcement agencies are working with archaic law. For them, rather than investigating the cases, it blocked is important to get content blocked," added Duggal. He also pointed out that the number of request that these transparency reports talk about in terms of government request when compared to the total population of the country, then these numbers are nowhere.

A look at the request made by the US government that bring out the stark difference. The US government made 15,344 queries for 23,667 users/accounts. India was around 5,000.