Social media poses challenges: Justice Lokur

Social media has posed challenges and it is difficult to draw the line on the free speech and the new medium, Supreme Court Judge Madan B Lokur said today.
Delivering the valedictory address during the 35th National Symposium of Heads of Police Training Institutions here, Justice Lokur said social media, which has emerged in last couple of years, has posed challenges.
"Where does one draw the line on free speech and social media? How does one stop something happening on social media which should not happen?
"I am not talking about anything which is objectionable in that sense but you could have rumours that are floating around on social media and it can create law and order problem. So how does one deal with those type of situation?" he said.

Justice Lokur, who has been interested in judicial reforms, computerisation of courts, judicial education, legal aid and services, described as "inadequate" the training and education given to police officials in dealing with the cases related to juveniles.
"Juvenile justice is an area which I am quite deeply concerned with. I find that perhaps in training that is given and education that is imparted to police officers does not seem to be adequate," he said.

He said training on laws related to cyber crimes, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and social media has assumed vital significance in the wake of challenges arising everyday with the emergence of communication and IT technology.

"New laws that are coming or have been enacted and new situations are arising on a day-to-day basis and we as judges have faced this problem and I am sure you, as police officers and educators, would be facing this problem.
"We are facing problems on issues like cyber crimes, cyber laws. You know how many experts are there in this country who can interpret the law if a particular event is a crime or is it not crime? If it is a crime how one can prevent it and punish somebody and how does one investigate that crime?" he said at the event organised by Bureau of Police Research and Development under the Ministry of Home Affairs.

He said when he was a student of law, there was no computer so there was no need for cyber laws or cyber crimes.
"Issues of plant varieties in IPR is something which was not taught to us. But some of you may need to be involved in that at some point of time, whether there is a violation of some law," he said.
The senior jurist also touched on issues related to data breach and the debate of free speech and curtailing rumour mongering on social media.
"You could have issues of data security. We keep reading about data of thousands and millions of people being lost suddenly. Credit cards, couple of millions of them, are being compromised.