India to amend IT law with clear definitions

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The Government of India will amend the Information Technology Act, 2000 to effectively deal with online data security, data privacy, identity theft, cyber-terrorism, child pornography, Spam, phishing and other online frauds. The amendment Bill, which has been pending for two years now, will finally be taken up by Parliament in this winter session. For the first time, the Government of India has tried to define cyber terrorism, child pornography, spam, phishing and online frauds through this new legislation. The amended legal framework will be in line with all the provisions of the European Cyber Convention. Once in place, the new legal framework would address emerging issues in cyberspace. The body corporates would have to implement best security practices to secure data collected by them while providing services and any leakage of data would result in payment of compensation to the victims. The government was working in co-operation with the Asia-Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team on cyber-security initiatives. Besides, the Data Security Council of India was also established as a government-industry initiative to create awareness and ensure compliance with the best security practices among IT and ITES organisations. "The challenge is huge for us to train our police and judicial officers to collect, analyse and present digital evidence in courts. We are working in this direction under the public-private partnership model," Gulshan Rai, a top IT official in the Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said. The Information Technology department was also working with public and private sector organisations to train manpower to deal with cyber-security issues. India is also sending people abroad for getting trained in implementation of best security practices. While assuring that the Union Communications and Information Technology Ministry would collaborate with "any agency in the world" for providing a safe and secure cyberspace to the citizens, Gulshan Rai called upon lawyers, judges, academia, industry and citizens to work together to evolve a mechanism for effective collaboration and co-operation in this regard.