Twitter informed the Karnataka High Court on October 27 that the reasons for any decision made by the Center to restrict an account must be listed. The submission from Twitter was related to a conflict with the Union administration that has been going on regarding the shutdown of social media accounts.
Twitter insisted that a standard be established so that the order (given under section 69A of the IT Act, 2000) may be appealed if necessary.
The authority to ‘give orders for preventing public access to any information through any computer resource’ is provided by Section 69 A of the IT Act.
Senior attorney Ashok Haranahalli, who represented Twitter, spoke at length before Justice Krishna Dixit and emphasised the importance of a well-justified ruling before any social media account may be blocked. He stated: ‘The Indian government argues that the reasons are not being kept a secret due to the intense public interest. If I don’t know the grounds, how do I appear in court?’
In response to orders issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) between February 2021 and February 2022 to block 39 Uniform Resource Locators, the court is hearing arguments from Twitter and the Union government (URL).
He reasoned further, ‘Let’s say someone writes a libellous piece, and Intermediary is unable to be held accountable. Blocking users and tweets is a different issue. But you won’t be held responsible for anything. Authorities must determine that the content damages India’s interests, sovereignty, etc., and blocking measures based on this determination require a well justified order to be in existence.’
Haranahalli continued,’ Should we ban a foreign handle simply because it is against our interest? Account-level blocking amounts to blocking of future information.’
Regarding this, Justice Dixit noted that newspapers and social media play a significant part in helping the general public establish judgments on any ongoing incident in the nation.
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