IT Act, 2000 to be reviewed

NEW DELHI: In the recent arrest of Baazee.com CEO over the sale of immoral video clip on the country's largest auction site, many a loop holes of India's IT law was made wide open, much to the embarrassment of the authorities. In a bid to act fast, the government has gone ahead and set up an expert committee to review the IT Act, 2000.

The Committee is to be headed by Brijesh Kumar, Secretary, Department of Information Technology. Others in the team include, AK Chakravarty, Scientist-G, DIT, Kiran Karnik, President Nasscom, AK Singh, Vakul Sharma, Advocate, Ajay Chowdhry, Chairman HCL Infosystems Ltd., Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO, Rediff, and R Ramraj, CEO, Sify Ltd. M Madhavan Nambiar, Joint Secretary in the DIT will be the Member-Secretary of the Committee. The Expert Committee is expected to submit its report within six weeks and will be assisted by a sub-Committee headed by AK Chakravarty, Scientist-Member.

The terms of reference of the committee are to re-examine the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 so as to ensure that the Act remains an enabler for development of ICT and has adequate measures for promoting growth of electronic commerce and electronic governance in the country. Also for regulating cyber crimes and cyber forensics as well as addresses all aspects of the cyber security etc., in a manner that there is no scope for different interpretations and follows the international guidelines for uniformity to gain from the process of globalisation. To consider the recommendations made by the Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Cyber Law and Cyber Forensics and finalise the amendments to the IT Act, 2000.

Some of the other issues which would come under the scanner during the review would be the data protection (privacy), feasibility of making the IT Act, 2000 technology-neutral, regulation of operations of cyber cafes and blocking of websites, India signing the European Cyber Crimes treaty and make suitable recommendations.

A press release from the government, stated, "The need for setting up of the Expert Committee was felt due to certain deficiencies noticed and various suggestions received for further improvement from professional bodies, institutions, other stakeholders relating to enabling provisions necessary for implementation of e-governance initiatives, cyber laws, cyber forensic etc."

It may be recalled that the subject matters Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 came into force w.e.f. 9.6.2000 by an enactment Act No. 21 of 2000. The law as enacted was based on the Model Law for E-Commerce developed by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and serves as an omnibus Act to provide legal recognition for transactions carried out by means of data interchange and other means of electronic communication, commonly referred to as "electronic commerce" which involves the use of alternative to paper-based methods of communication and storage of information, to facilitate electronic filing of documents with the Government agencies.

In order to consider those suggestions and the feedback, an Inter-Ministerial Working Group (IMWG) on Cyber Law and Cyber Forensics was set up. Though the IMWG made a number of recommendations it could not finalise the recommendations for making the Act technology-neutral and for providing legislation for data protection (privacy) which is now referred to the present Expert Committee.