This paper has shown that despite its lively democracy, strong tradition of press freedom and political debates, India is in many ways struggling to find the right balance between freedom of expression online and other concerns such as security.
International summits and fora over the next two years will be critical in determining the internet’s future.
Key concerns in assessing online freedom of expression in India are the barriers to accessing the internet itself.
Recent revelations in the Hindu have raised concerns over the extraordinary extent of domestic surveillance online, without any legal and procedural framework to protect privacy.
The criminalisation of online speech in India is of concern as the authorities have prosecuted legitimate political comment online and personal views expressed on social media.
Since 2003, the institutional structure of internet censorship and filtering has centred on the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT), a department of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology that serves as a nodal agency for accepting and reviewing requests from a designated pool of government officials to block access to specific websites.
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