The ministry revealed that children's helpline, Childline had received a total of 4,000 cases of child sexual abuse in eight months from 315 districts around the country The Women and Child Development ministry has formed a committee to look into the legal obligation of intermediaries and servers in the cyberspace, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc., to book a complaint with the police in situations when sexual crimes are committed online on that site. The committee was formed during a consultation that the WCD ministry held with officials of the home ministry, IT ministry, Delhi Police, Andhra Pradesh Police, NCPCR and some NGOs. The consultation, held discuss a national alliance against sexual abuse of children in the cyberspace, deliberated on the definition of child pornography, the role of intermediaries, on the need for an Indian standard while dealing with such cases, and, on forming standard operating procedures (SOPs) while dealing with such cases. The ministry revealed that children's helpline, Childline had received a total of 4,000 cases of child sexual abuse in eight months from 315 districts around the country. Of these, a substantial number were related to the online space, said a ministry official. Amod Kanth of Prayaas NGO, who was part of the day-long consultations said that monitoring of global agencies is not an easy task. “In several cases, where servers of these services are based in the US, the Indian law is not applicable,” said Kanth. Sunitha Krishnan of Prajwala said that the need for a task force and for an institutional mechanism, like a secretariat, was also discussed. A ministry official, citing the example of a 15-year-old American teen, who livestreamed her suicide last week, said that the ministry is working out a way to find what should the government do in these situations. “By the time the Georgia police took any action, the disturbing video had been shared thousands of time, letting several sites make profits off the tragedy,” said the official. Krishnan also said that there is a strong case for the amendment of section 79. While section 66E of the Information Technology Act, 2008, penalises the transmission of any visual imagery of a person without their consent with imprisonment of upto three years, section 79 of the Act exempts intermediaries in certain cases. This includes cases where the transmission is done by a third party, where they have not selected the receiver, and, where they have not selected and modified the information in any way. Sections 292 of the the Indian Penal Code (IPC) penalises the possession of “obscene content”; and, section 293 penalises the sale of such content to minors. Section 67 (B) of the IT Act penalises the creation and transmission of child sex abuse imagery to up to seven years, while the Protection of Children from Sexual Offence (POCSO) Act, 2012, also penalises child porn to up to three years. Two years ago, when a national outcry erupted over the gangrape of a six-year-old in a Bangalore school, the investigations threw up the presence of child pornography in the laptop of one of the suspects. Yet, the Bangalore police did not book him for the presence of child porn. Last year, a Facebook page (kochi sundari girls) which was instrumental in child sex trafficking, was shut down only after NGOs made a concerted effort to do so. The Supreme Court issued notice to the Centre, the telecom regulatory body TRAI and social media tools WhatsApp and Facebook, over an appeal alleging that the instant messaging service was invading the privacy of its users and sought regulations to protect personal information. Petitioner’s counsel Harish Salve sought the court’s intervention to protect consumer data till India enacted data protection laws, since, he alleged that the service -- provided free - was used by over 155 million Indian subscribers and violated their constitutional provisions with regards to privacy. A bench presided by Chief Justice JS Kehar has directed the Centre and the respondents to respond within two weeks. The appeal comes in the wake of a September order, where the Delhi High Court barred WhatsApp to share data with its parent company Facebook, if subscribers opted out of the service before the new privacy policies came into effect on September 25.

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