Government all set to tighten Cyber laws

New Delhi, Jan 17 (UNI) The government today said it will accomodate as many recommendations given by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology as possible to to deal with data crime, transmission of pictures and other kinds of cyber crime.

''The department will accommodate most of the recommendations made by the Standing Committee. The IT law will be strengthened to deal with data crime, transmission of pictures and other kinds of cyber crime,'' Minister of State for Telecommunications Shakeel Ahmed told reporters while inaugurating Electronics and Information Technology Exposition (ELITEX) 2008 here.

The Minister also assured of all possible incentives to be given to the domestic players in order to help them set up manufacture telecom equipment in the country.

Standing Committee Chairman on IT Chairman Nikhil Kumar said the committee had submitted its recommendations mid last year, emphasising the need for creating a safer information society and preventing cyber crimes.

He said the Standing Committee had spent a lot of time in examining issues relating to security of cyber space and had taken evidence from across the country in order to propose amendment to the IT law.

What is likely to come under the ambit of a new law will be the term 'obscenity' which is defined under the Section 67 of the IT Act and has been drawn from Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code, which is the only other statutory provision under Indian law that deals with obscenity.

On regulating online content, the Indian government has made the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) the only agency that has the authority to block a website.

A move is expected now to involve greater participation in keeping unwanted material out of the domain of the web.

Misleading domain name, Internet fraud (such as phishing), credit card fraud, intellectual property theft, cyber stalking, child pornography and economic espionage among others is expectec to be dealt with a strong hand.

Referring to the e-governance project of his Department, Dr Ahmed said 25,000 crore has been earmarked for over five years.

He assured Mr Kumar that the Community Service Centres in Bihar would come up in every block by the end of March 2009.

A compendium of 562 technologies and products developed under the Department of IT during the past years was distributed at the event.

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