Blocked over a 1,000 URLs this year, Centre tells House IT panel | Latest News India

The authorities has informed the parliamentary standing committee on info technology (IT) that it has issued orders to get down extra than 1,000 URLs till March 7 this 12 months, persons familiar with the matter reported.

A Uniform Source Locator (URL) functions as the handle of a resource — webpage, app, and many others — on the online.

The panel, led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, was informed by the ministry of electronics and info technological know-how (MeitY) previously this week that it blocked 1,385, 2,799, 3,635, 9,849, 6,096 and 1,096 URLs in the course of the a long time 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 (till 7th March, 2022) respectively, stated one of the people today talked about previously mentioned inquiring not to be named.

Written content removing is carried out at the direction of a specified officer, and the choices are reviewed by an inter-ministerial committee below portion 69A of the Information and facts Technological innovation Act, 2000.

The optimum quantity of take down orders came in 2020, soon after the border tensions concerning India and China flared up in the aftermath of a clash in eastern Ladakh’s Galwan Valley on June 15 — the initial fatal conflict in between soldiers of the two sides alongside the Line of Genuine Manage (LAC) in 45 years.

The clash resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian troopers, like a commanding officer, and an undisclosed selection of Chinese soldiers.

On June 29 that year, the govt made a decision to ban video system Tik Tok and 59 other purposes. A second spherical of blocks arrived on July 23, when the ministry resolved to take down mirror purposes that were being working despite the ban. The applications ended up banned for staying a “threat to the sovereignty of the place and countrywide security”.

On September 2, 2020, came the third spherical of blocks, this time having down 118 cell programs, including the well-known gaming platform PUBG, for “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner”.

In February this year, the ministry made a decision to block 54 additional applications, after getting inputs from the Union ministry of house affairs that they were being clones of the formerly taken down apps and offered a privateness and protection problems, as nicely elevated espionage concerns.

For the duration of the assembly with the Residence panel on IT, the ministry also outlined the different methods it has taken to assure world-wide-web security in the region.

“Amidst the growing concerns all around deficiency of transparency, accountability and legal rights of customers similar to digital media and with an purpose to be certain an Open, Secure & Dependable and Accountable Internet, MeitY has notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Pointers and Electronic Media Ethics Code) Regulations, 2021 (“IT Procedures, 2021”) on 25th February, 2021 below the IT Act,” the ministry stated.

It mandates that social media platforms take away any unlawful content material in just 36 hrs, on the other hand, in cases linked to sexual functions, nudity or morphed pictures, the content material has to be taken down with 24 hours.

As much as cybersecurity instruction is worried, the ministry mentioned it done 15 and 19 training courses covering 708 and 5,169 participants during the decades 2020 and 2021 respectively.