Page 5 - It Ministry

Modified data protection bill to bring ease for startup ecosystem: Experts

MeitY on Friday released a draft version of the much-awaited data protection law, in the fourth such effort since it was first proposed in July 2018

NASSCOM research group to come up with standards for data anonymisation

'Unfiltered access not advisable', says CEO of Data Security Council of India

VLC Media Player returns to India as MeitY lifts ban on VideoLAN website

The VideoLAN website was blocked by MeitY for communicating with servers of a previously banned app, Onmyoji Arena

Digital India Act framework draft to be out by 2023: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

A significant amount of work has been done on proposed Digital India Act, and the draft legislative framework to support 'India's techade' is expected by early 2023, Minister of State for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said. The comments assume significance as India is moving swiftly towards a strong framework to catalyse its digital ambitions and govern online ecosystem, with openness, user safety and trust as the guiding principles. At the same time, the government has asserted that extensive consultation will go into framing key legislations which are going to be essential building blocks for 'new India' and its digital architecture. Asked about the status of Digital India Act, which will replace the IT Act, Chandrasekhar said: "A significant amount of work has been done on it, and we expect that in early 2023, under PM's leadership, a legislative framework for India's techade will be placed in front of the country." The minister asserted that the government intends to have detaile

Conflicting businesses

Elon Musk's other interests may affect Twitter

'IT rules give 72 hours but remove illegal content as fast as possible'

IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Saturday said while social media norms require platforms to remove illegal content within 72 hours of being flagged, he feels the timelines are "too long" and platforms should takedown such content "as fast as possible". Chandrasekhar said the IT Ministry had been keen on prescribing a 24-hour timeline for removal of illegal content (as specified under rules) given that "virality and velocity" of misinformation tends to be much higher, but then finally settled for 72 hours after wide consultations. "Frankly I am of the opinion that 72 hours is too long...it was 24 hours during consultation, but it was widely felt that this is still early days and let us keep it at 72 hours and then progressively as the platforms gain capacity and capability, we will create a shorter window," the minister said. His message to social media platforms: "Letter of IT rules says 72 hours but the spirit should be as fast as possible". The complaints around illegal conte

'Scope of appellate panels for social media grievance to be announced soon'

IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Saturday said the modalities defining the structure and scope of Grievance Appellate Committees will be worked out soon, and hoped that their formation will, in fact, discourage social media platforms from continuing with their "casual" and "tokenism" approach to address user grievances. The government on Friday tightened IT rules, paving the way for the setting up of grievance appellate panels, which will settle issues that users may have against the way social media platforms initially addressed their complaints regarding content and other matters. The government says that the "broken" grievance redressal mechanism currently being offered by intermediaries (read social media platforms) and lakhs of messages flagging users' concerns around unresolved complaints had forced its hand. "Grievance Appellate Committee will be an important institution in the coming days for internet and intermediaries. We will make an announcement about its structure, .

Govt has its way on social media grievance redress; GACs to be formed

This comes with MeitY notifying on Friday the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2022, after five months of deliberations

Reasons to block must be recorded, communicated to users: Twitter to HC

The high court was hearing the plea challenging the blocking of 39 URLs by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in 2021

Govt focused on enhancing Internet penetration: IT Minister Chandrasekhar

Union Minister of State for Electronics & IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Thursday said that the Centre is undertaking various collaborative measures to enhance "underlying technologies like microelectronic and semiconductor to increase Internet penetration".

IT Ministry seeks response from WhatsApp for cause of Tuesday's outage

The IT Ministry is learnt to have asked Meta-owned WhatsApp to share reasons behind Tuesday's service outage of the messaging platform. WhatsApp services snag on Tuesday had left users complaining about not being able to send or receive text and video messages, and services had resumed after nearly two hours. Sources said the IT Ministry has asked the company to share reasons on what caused the WhatsApp outage. An email sent to WhatsApp on the issue did not elicit a response. In a late night statement on Tuesday, WhatsApp said a "technical error" caused the outage. "The brief outage was a result of a technical error on our part and has now been resolved," a Meta company spokesperson had said. According to Downdetector, which tracks outage reports, the messaging app was not working for many users across multiple regions on Tuesday afternoon. At one point during the outage on Tuesday, over 29,000 reports were flagged by users on Downdetector. Downdetector's heatmap was showing What

Top headlines: Hikes, bonuses come down for IT firms, GACs in IT rules

The crazy salary hikes and bonuses with attrition hitting the roof is finally tempering down for the Indian IT services sector. Read more in our top headlines

MeitY gets legal dept approval for govt-backed GACs in IT rules

The entire process, from the filing of an appeal to taking a decision, will be concluded online

Govt may extend deadline for Cert-In cyber rules by 3 months to help MSMEs

According to Cert-In's guidelines, all enterprises, intermediaries, data centres and govt organisation are required to report any data breach to the government within six hours of becoming aware of it

Top Headlines: TCS on moonlighting, licensing of digital apps, and more

TCS said moonlighting is an "ethical issue" and against its core values but has not taken any action against any staff

3-day Digital India Conference of State IT Ministers concludes in Delhi

The three-day long "Digital India Conference of State IT Ministers" began on 1st October 2022 and concluded in the national capital, said the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology

Will cover close to 80-90% of India with 5G in next two years: Vaishnaw

Close to Rs 500 crore per year of investments for developing new technology will be available for the country, said Ashwini Vaishnaw

Aadhaar authentication grows 44% in August to 2.2 bn, says IT ministry

Authentication of individuals using Aadhaar grew by 44 per cent to about 220 crore in August, the IT ministry said on Thursday. As of end August 2022, a cumulative number of 8,074.95 crore Aadhaar authentications have been carried out so far, as against 7,855.24 crore such authentications by the end of July, indicating rise in use of Aadhaar based services. "Aadhaar usage and adoption by residents is witnessing sizable growth indicative of how it is increasingly supporting ease of living for residents. In August, 219.71 crore authentication transactions were carried out via Aadhaar, a growth of more than 44 per cent against July 2022," the statement said. Around 1,000 social welfare schemes in the country run by both Centre and states have been notified to use Aadhaar till date. Aadhaar custodian Unique Identification Authority of India is in discussion with state government to onboard more services on Aadhaar platform. A majority of these monthly transactions were done by using .

Zee Media moves Delhi High Court against I&B Ministry on Ku-Band issue

I&B Ministry had asked Zee Media to remove its ten regional news channels from the Ku-Band (a form of satellite frequency) on the GSAT-15 Satellite, that was making these accessible on DD Freedish

Media reported on farm stir, why ban our accounts: Twitter to HC

Twitter has challenged the blocking of only 39 URLs out of 1,474 accounts and 175 tweets