Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Union ministries of home affairs and electronics and information technology (MeitY) to take urgent steps to create a URL-specific and judicially supervised emergency mechanism to protect citizens from grave unlawful digital content.
While disposing of a PIL by advocate N K Goswami, a bench headed by CJI Surya Kant said the petitioner in public interest had highlighted the danger from digital threats of violence, doxxing, exposure of minor children’s private details, non-consensual intimate/deepfake content and identity-manipulating digital impersonation.
The bench, also comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, said such cyber crimes severely impacted an individual’s right to freedom of speech, right to dignity, privacy and right to life.
It said the petitioner had highlighted protections against such threats using internet, digital mediums and Artificial Intelligence existing in other countries and suggested to the govt to consider the problems highlighted in the PIL for urgent remedial measures.
Goswami said given the misuse of AI and the proliferation of social media and its reach, it was urgently required to create “a constitutionally compliant emergency mechanism against grave unlawful digital harms, namely specific threats, doxxing, unauthorised exposure of children’s private details, non-consensual intimate or Al-generated morphed content, and deepfake/digitally manipulated impersonation causing immediate grave harm”. He said he neither sought a blanket ban on any speech nor suppression of political speech, criticism, satire, parody, journalism, academic comment, public-interest reporting, legal commentary or opinion.
