Info sought on GAC orders on pleas against social media companies

It has been more than a month and a half since GACs became operational and as per the official portal of the committees, they have received 42 appeals out of which 24 have been disposed of, as of press time Wednesday.

While a press release from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on January 28 said that “periodic reviews of GACs, and reporting and disclosures of GAC orders, will also be part of the process”, there has been no public disclosure of the orders so far, said experts.

It is important to understand the nature of these appeals, the category of the grievances, and the exact time taken for their redressal, said Kazim Rizvi, founder of public policy think tank The Dialogue.

This information will be crucial to ensure greater transparency in the grievance redressal process and the functioning of the GAC, and will enhance the efficiency of the appellate process, he said.

Kavita Bhatia from the ministry did not respond to calls and messages from ET on the absence of public disclosure of GAC orders.

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Rules require GACs to resolve an appeal within 30 days from the date of receipt. Significant social media intermediaries such as Google and Facebook are part of the platform to address complaints and file their responses to grievances via the portal.One of the three GACs deals with national security issues, while another handles content and the rest of the complaints go to the third committee.

“It is also important to understand the number of appeals heard by each of the three constituted GACs to ensure the efficiency of the committees which will encourage more users to report their grievances if they are unsatisfied with the platforms’ decisions,” Rizvi said.

Rahul Sharma, director of Grade Ace, an advisory firm that works on data protection, cyber security and tech policy issues, said: “The GACs are doing the job of resolving grievances. There should be more disclosure and transparency in the system, for better functionality. They should disclose the nature of GAC orders.”

Either they should provide a redacted version for public consumption (protecting the identifiers of the complainants) or they should provide a monthly report analysing and summarising their orders, he said.

Digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) on April 1 wrote to the chairpersons of the three GACs urging them to release the process and details of the periodic reviews. It also sought details of all intermediaries under the Information Technology Act, 2000, against whose decisions appeals have been filed so far.

Constitution of the GAC under the IT Amendment Rules, 2022, allows for user appeals against due diligence actions of intermediaries “to be decided by members of executive-appointed committees with little to no specialised experience in dealing with user harms”, the IFF said in a statement on April 5.

“The IT rules made private platforms the arbiters of permissible speech on the Internet, in the name of making social media intermediaries accountable to their users,” the rights body said. The combination of these provisions could lead to social media intermediaries pre-emptively censoring free speech on the Internet, it said.

The first panel is led by Rajesh Kumar, CEO, Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre under the union home ministry. It has Indian Police Service officer Ashutosh Shukla and Sunil Soni, the former chief general manager and chief information officer of Punjab National Bank, as whole-time members.

Vikram Sahay, joint secretary in charge of policy and administration division of the information and broadcast ministry, leads the second panel that has retired Commodore Sunil Kumar Gupta and Kavindra Sharma, a former vice president of L&T Infotech, as whole-time members.

Kavita Bhatia, a scientist in the IT ministry, helms the third panel with Sanjay Goel, a retired Indian Railway Traffic Service officer and Krishnagiri Ragothamarao Murali Mohan, a former managing director of IDBI Intech, as whole-time members.