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In a major step to curb the circulation of child sexual abuse material and rape videos online, the Supreme Court has ordered the Centre to set up an online portal and hotline so that people can anonymously report offenders.
This has been possible owing to the suo moto cognizance taken by the Supreme Court, of a letter sent by Hyderabad based Prajwala, an anti-trafficking NGO. Prajwala’s Sunitha Krishnan has been working to curb the circulation of such videos from social media, search engines and networking sites for several years now.
Taking cognizance, the apex court had directed the CBI to investigate the matter and nab the culprits in the two videos. It also demanded a response from the Centre on the same, and for an official petition to be filed in the court.
A bench comprising Justices MB Lokur and UU Lalit, which has been hearing the case proceedings since 2015, had set up a panel in March this year to come up with recommendations to block and report such material on sexual violence and crimes online.
The panel comprised representatives from Google India, Yahoo India, Microsoft Corporation (India) Ltd, and Facebook. During the latest hearing, the Supreme Court accepted some of the eleven recommendations made by this panel.
There are key directions given by the Supreme Court now.
“The second thing the court has asked for is for the civil society and government organisations to put together a list of keywords that are used by people to search for these materials,” Sunitha explains.
This, she adds, will help in curbing dissemination at the point of search.
The court has also asked for tracking and monitoring of hashtags which are used by people to upload and search for this content.
Sunitha also said:
Directing the Centre to abide by and implement the panel’s unanimous recommendations, the Supreme Court has asked the Centre to submit a status report on the same on 11 December. The court will then examine the recommendations made by the panel wherever there are differences in opinion.
(Originally published on The News Minute)
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