Indian Government is not yet satisfied with the efforts to stop the evil spread of child pornography in the country. In order to tackle this menace in a more focused manner, the Govt. has established a new cyber crime control hub called Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre or simply IC4.
As per reports coming in, Govt. has allocated a budget of Rs 400 crore to IC4 to make the anti-child porn campaign more effective and efficient.
The formation of this special task force having special powers have been formed after a ‘expert committee’ investigated the problem, and submitted their report to the Home Ministry. Based on the blueprint and strategy as mentioned by this committee, Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre has been established with special powers.
The committee, in their report said, “These kinds of content and websites need to be monitored and blocked. The supporting laws need to be strengthened, parents need to be educated to monitor children’s activities in cyber space and educate children about good cyber behavior.”
As per an unnamed official, Home Minister Rajnath Singh has already given the green signal to implement speedy implementation of the committee’s recommendation and to execute whatever is needed in-order to stop child porn.
IC4 On A Stealth Mission
As observed earlier, there is always a lack of co-ordination between different hubs of cyber control teams in the country, which leads to chaos. But this time, things are different, for a change.
For instance, IC4 will have direct access to CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems) and NATGRID (National Intelligence Grid), which are India’s two biggest databases having information related to various kinds of crime and criminals in the country.
Besides executing rigorous campaigns against distributors and patrons of child porn, this task force will closely monitor International gangs and hackers who tend to hack Indian servers to steal information.
As per sources, the main objective of IC4 would be to become a key nodal point in the fight against cyber crime, and to provide early warnings for law enforcement agencies in the country.
Based on the expert committee’s recommendation, IC4 will provide all sorts of technical information to CBI and State level police force, besides empowering citizens and Internet users to report instances of cyber crime in their day-to-day life.
Mission Against Child Porn Gaining Momentum
Meanwhile, Supreme Court Women Lawyers Association has filed an intervention application in Kamlesh Vaswani Vs Union of India, seeking permanent ban on all sorts of porn access inside India.
As per the petition, “Pornography corrupts the mind of the young generation today, who tend to commit crime against women/girls/children. Crime against women has been increasing at a very high rate in the country today. And it is an important matter of concern for the country today”.
This petition is asking the Indian Govt. to form a National Policy on Pornography, which bans all sorts of porn access in India, which includes torrent websites and other file sharing portals.
The petition specifically says, “The issue of pornography and the pornographic content has serious implications on human mind and behavior. Studies have shown that pornography leads to sexual crimes, violent sexual behavior, aggression, frustration and depravity of mind”.
Last month, Govt. had placed a blanket ban on 857 porn websites across the nation, which was termed as ‘Talibanization of Internet Freedom’.
However, after massive protests against this attack on privacy and freedom of choice, Govt. gave in and asked the ISPs to remove the ban; but not before asking the ISPs to identify child porn, and ensure that this particular type of porn is not accessed. This decision puts an interesting question mark before the law-enforcing authorities: How and Who will decide which porn is child related and which is ‘normal’. Will every video and image needs to be scanned before its shared for the common Internet user?
Or IC4 will form special tools and software to stop the spread of child porn along with cyber crime?
Lots of questions, but very little answers.
We will keep you updated as more details come in.
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