According to a report by The Indian Express, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has already started the program on a trial basis, asking citizens to report illegal content on the internet. MHA wants these volunteers to identify posts that include child pornography, rape, terrorism, radicalization, and anti-national activities. [Read: How much does it cost to buy, own, and run an EV? It’s not as much as you think] As reported by the Wire, Jammu & Kashmir police already released a statement asking people to register as volunteers on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal: The publication noted that while people signing up might have to upload a valid government ID, there won’t be any verification process to vet them. While reporting rape threats, terrorist and child exploitative content will make the internet a safer place, anti-national activities can be often subjective if not defined clearly. This could end up giving the power to restrict free speech to these volunteers. Recently, based on the government’s order Twitter blocked several accounts and tweets posting about farmer’s protests in India. Earlier this month, the police force of the northern state of Uttarakhand said that it will scan social media posts for anti-national content before approving applications for a passport. If there’s no defined process to hire these volunteers, the program could promote censorship and snooping. The last thing India needs right now is to adopt practices from China’s internet restrictions. A paper published by the Centre for Internet and Society, a nonprofit researching on internet policies, noted that such initiatives could lead to intrusion and threaten the safety of people who are expressing dissent against the authorities.
