Govt to introduce new mechanism, launch helpline to curb child pornography

The central government is not satisfied with the existing mechanism to tackle child pornography, and is planning to take stringent measures on the issue. According to Amar Ujala, the government is also expected to issue fresh directives to internet giants Google and Facebook.

Following a Supreme Court directive in this regard, the websites had come up with a system to report instances of child pornography. As per that system, action is taken on a content once it is reported.

However, the government doesn’t feel that it’s enough, and intends to stop such content while being uploaded itself.

In a recently held meeting between Home Ministry officials and representatives from social networking websites, it was decided that keywords related to child pornography need to be collated and prevent content from being uploaded on internet on the basis of those keywords.

Meanwhile, the government is also expected to come up with web portal and helpline number where people can file complaint about pornographic content directly.

The Centre had in August told the Supreme Court that they had taken several steps to curb online child sexual abuse contents, including blocking of 3,522 websites carrying child pornographic materials in June this year.

The government, in its report filed before a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and A M Khanwilkar, had said that Interpol's 'worst of list' on online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) was being blocked regularly.

It also said that an inter- ministerial committee to curb online CSAM had been constituted, and the panel had recommended that till such time a centralised mechanism be built in India to dynamically monitor websites/URLs containing online CSAM.

The government had also told the apex court that Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) ordered the Internet Service Providers Association of India and the Department of Telecommunication to disable or remove access to child pornography sites by adopting the IWF list to prevent the distribution and transmission of online CSAM in India.

(With agency inputs)