The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Narendra Modi-led central government to come up with a time frame needed to form guidelines to curb misuse of social media within three weeks.
The court was hearing Facebook’s petition to transfer cases in the Bombay, Madras and Madhya Pradesh High Courts seeking interlinking of Aadhaar with social media accounts, LiveLaw reported.
A bench of justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose expressed serious concern over some social media platforms not being able to trace the originator of a message or an online content and said the government must step in now, PTI reported.
For the latest news and more, follow HuffPost India on Twitter, Facebook, and subscribe to our newsletter.
“We can’t get away by saying that we don’t have a technology to track originators of online crime, if there is a technology to do it, then there is a technology to stop it,” the bench said, according to The Indian Express.
The judges said it was for the government to come up with appropriate guidelines to deal with these issues because neither the Supreme Court nor the high courts were competent to decide on this scientific issue.
The top court asked the government to strike a balance between the privacy of individuals, sovereignty of the State and reputation of individuals while drafting the regulations, Hindustan Times’ Bhadra Sinha reported. “People can challenge it later,” the bench said.
“Once the government makes policy, then we can decide on the legality of policy. But issues like privacy need to be regulated by the government,” Justice Deepak Gupta said.
According to Bar&Bench, Centre told the Supreme Court it was in the process of deliberations and was inviting suggestions for the same.