Balancing freedom of speech and national security

Synopsis: The government warned Twitter over its reluctance in following the executive order for blocking of information. However, the focus should be on balancing free speech and national security.

Background

• The government used its power under Section 69A of the information and technology act to block information on the Micro-blogging site.
• This section allows the government to block any information by issuing orders to a digital intermediary. National security, public order, sovereignty and integrity of India, etc, are some grounds for blocking.
• The apparent reason behind such an order was the use of a controversial hashtag that disturbed public order.
• The order was only partially followed by Twitter.

Government’s Stance:

• Social media platforms should respect the law of the land. Partial compliance is simply a violation.
• Further, there should be consistency in behaviour as Twitter supported police action in Washington’s Capitol Hill incident. But similar support was not seen in the 26th January violent protests at Red fort, Delhi.
  • It removed problematic hashtags as the same was causing the spread of hatred. 
  • It viewed the blocking of journalists’ and activists’ accounts as a threat to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19 of the constitution. Therefore, accounts were reactivated after some time. 

Way Forward:

• Both the government and Twitter are determined not to escalate the issue. The government has only issued a warning while Twitter has refrained from approaching the court.
• There is a need to re-examine the extent of the wide ambit of censorship powers under Section 69A. An opportunity was missed by the court in Shreya Singhal versus Union of India, in which the extent of the section was not rationalized.

In the world’s largest democracy, the culture of secrecy and arbitrariness shouldn’t be allowed to suppress freedom of speech and expression. The government must view freedom of speech as a facilitator to the security of the state and not an impediment.