Centre Not Empowered To Issue ‘General’ Account Ban Orders: Twitter To Karnataka HC

Sharpening its attack against the government, microblogging platform Twitter on Monday (October 17) told the Karnataka High Court that the Centre was not empowered to issue “general” block orders to ban social media accounts.

“There can’t be general blocking orders unless the content violates the grounds under 69A,” Twitter’s counsel Arvind Datar was quoted as saying by Business Standard.

The Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 grants the union government the power to issue directions for blocking access to any digital information in matters involving sovereignty and integrity of India and a clutch of other reasons. However, the law demands that reasons for issuing such orders should be recorded in writing by authorities.

Citing the section, senior advocate Ashok Haranahalli, who was appearing for Twitter, said that non-disclosure of reasons for blocking user content or accounts went against the tenants of right to freedom of expression.

Arguing before Justice Krishna S Dixit, advocate Haranahalli also noted that the government’s directive to not communicate the block orders to the affected users was ‘completely contrary to the law’. This practice of not issuing notices to users, Haranahalli said, also affected the rights of the intermediaries.

“Blocking of an account is an extreme measure…if someone is a repeat offender…but not in every case you go on blocking accounts. The doctrine of proportionality will also apply,” he was quoted as saying.

Pleading Twitter’s case before the judge, the senior advocate also said that the rights of the users under Article 19 were infringed by blocking their accounts without notice. Twitter also submitted that only the contentious information be blocked under the issued orders, and not the entirety of the account.

Based on the directions issued by Justice Dixit during the last hearing, Twitter also submitted a comparative analysis of how four jurisdictions across the globe – the UK, the US, Australia and the EU – dealt with similar issues.

The court was hearing a plea filed by Twitter against 10 blocking orders issued by Centre last year between February 2021 and February 2022. The orders sought to bar certain information and suspend several other Twitter handles.

In its plea, the social media giant claimed that the ban on accounts was a disproportionate measure and violated the rights of users under the Constitution. In response, the government said that the directions to block certain Twitter accounts were issued in national and public interest.

Interestingly, the US-based tech giant has only challenged block orders pertaining to around 39 uniform resource locators (URLs), as against orders issued for a total of 1,474 accounts and 175 tweets.

During the previous hearing, Twitter told the court that close to 50%-60% of tweets that the government asked it to block were ‘innocuous’.

Right after that, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) directed internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to 67 pornographic websites under the new IT Rules, citing court orders. Earlier this month, it also emerged that the official Twitter handle of the Pakistan government was withheld in the country over a purported ‘legal demand’.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) last month directed YouTube to block 45 videos from 10 channels as the content appeared detrimental to the sovereignty and integrity of the country and public order.

In July this year, I&B Minister Anurag Thakur informed the Parliament that the Centre banned 94 YouTube channels and 19 social media accounts since 2021 for reasons ranging from fake news to anti-India content.

As per Statista, India was the third largest market for Twitter in terms of user base, accounting for roughly 23.6 Mn users as of January 2022.