It is duty of Twitter to provide details of account holders: Govt to Karnataka HC

The union government has informed the High Court of Karnataka that being a significant intermediary micro blogging site Twitter has additional responsibility and it was its duty to provide details of account holdersAdditional Solicitor General R Sankarnarayanan who appeared for the central government gave the examples of dangerous tweets that is going to affect the integrity sovereignty of India or is going to create a public dis order then naturally we will step in and either we will issue a take down notice or we will say block the accountThe ASG cited somebody gives a tweet under the assumed name of Government of Pakistan about India Occupied Kashmir somebody says V Prabhakaran LTTE leader is a hero and he is coming back All this is so dangerous that it is going to incite violenceTwitter approached the HC in June 2022 against the takedown orders issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology MeitYTwitter claims the government is required to issue notice to the owners of the twitter handles whose accounts are blocked Twitter has also claimed that the government has even prevented it from informing the account holders whose accounts have been ordered to be blockedAlso Read Karanataka election Congress poll promises only a visiting card says CM Basavraj BommaiThe ASG also submitted to the court that Twitter cannot take protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act which exempts social media intermediaries in certain cases Twitter was bound to follow the directions of the authorities designated by the government he submittedThe ASG said that according to Rule 4 of IT Rules 2021 Twitter was required to provide details required by the government It is very difficult for a government to monitor and do it to the extent it does it requires support he saidAccording to the ASG The doctrine of proportionality has undergone a lot of change consistent with the change in societal values After the Anuradha Bhasin case the intermediary guidelines were also framedRule 3 of the Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules the due diligence by an intermediary is necessary Twitter being a significant social media intermediary it is the duty of the intermediary to provide details of the account holder the ASG told the courtJustice Krishna S Dixit asked the ASG What is meant by significant intermediaryTo which the ASG replied that it depended on the volume of traffic on the site It is the number of users The volume As per Rule 21v Significant Social media intermediaries having number of registered users in India above such threshold as notified by the Central Government he said It is the duty of the intermediary to provide the origin of tweet Rule 4 mandates that he must give it Therefore the argument must fall flat the ASG saidDuring a hearing on February 6 the government had told the HC that Twitter being a foreign entity cannot claim protection under Article 19 of the ConstitutionThey are not entitled to protection under Article 19 as it is a foreign body corporate and foreign entity Under Article 14 there is nothing arbitrary and section 69 A has been properly followed Moreover failure to give notice to an account holder is not a factor which would vitiate the entire proceedings Therefore they are not entitled to any relief the Court was toldThe SingleJudge Bench of Justice Dixit who heard the arguments on Thursday adjourned the hearing to April 10This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever