Beyond Placards: Government Puts Time-Limit of 36 Hours For Tech Giants To Remove Content Showing Abuse Of Women And Children

Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has approached search engine giant Google to share Application Programming Interface (API) for identifying child sexual abuse content on social media platforms, The Hindu has reported.

The ministry is also in talks with Microsoft to commercially acquire PhotoDNA, a software that aids in the removal of images of child exploitation. MHA told the Supreme Court that 26 FIRs were filed based on complaints recorded on the website www.cybercrime.gov.in.

More than 2 lakh people have visited the website since it was launched on 20 September to receive complaints from citizens on objectionable online content related to child sexual abuse material, child pornography and sexually explicit material such as rape/ gang rape. The time limit given to take down objectionable content from the website has been brought down from 72 hours to 36 hours.

The ministry has told the court that it has compiled keywords to identify objectionable content in the English, Hindi, Bengali and Kannada languages. These keywords have been shared with social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. As per the directions of the apex court, the MHA will send detailed guidelines and standard operating procedures (SOPs) to eliminate child pornography, gang rape imageries on the internet.