Advocate (Dr.) Prashant Mali's Blog

The French Supreme Court of Administrative Law  rejected  Google’s claim that it had to pay a $57 million fine last year for failing to tell its users how to handle their personal information. On June 19, the French State Council officially released the trial results, confirming the previous investigation results of the data regulator CNIL,  that Google did not provide Android users with “clear enough” information reminders. This  means that it did not have lawful consent to use user data for specific advertising. Considering the seriousness and continuity of Google’s violations, the $57 million fine is also justified. More importantly, the court also confirmed the French national regulatory authority’s jurisdiction over Google. Based on the GDPR regulations, the multi-million-dollar fines faced by Google are by far the highest fines against technology giants. This incident will also have a certain symbolic significance, mainly for those who think whether the GDPR c...

Indian  Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on 9th February has arrested the country's first 'darknet' narcotics operative who allegedly shipped hundreds of psychotropic drug parcels abroad in the garb of sex stimulation medicines.  Dipu Singh, 21, son of a retired army officer, was arrested by the sleuths of the Delhi zonal unit of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) from Lucknow recently.  Darknet refers to the deep hidden internet platform that is used for narcotics sale, exchange of pornographic content and other illegal activities by using the secret alleys of the the onion router (ToR) to stay away from the surveillance of law enforcement agencies. Owing to its end-to-end encryption, darknet is considered very tough to crack when it comes to investigating criminal activities being rendered over it.  Singh was a major player on the darknet. His listings were found in one of the biggest and reliable darknet markets like Empire Market and Majestic Garden. Accused ...

A Canadian insurance company infected by ransomware virus paid off the cybercriminals using its cyber insurance policy. Their British reinsurers, having to disburse 109.25 Bitcoins, wanted it back from the blackmailing cybercriminals. After infection, the unnamed Canadian company suffered a total lockdown of all of its systems and asked its reinsurance firm to pay the ransom so it could get back on its feet. Paying off blackmailers holding a company to ransom is never advisable, many a time it is against the local law. Despite a negotiation that made criminals bring down their initial demand of $1.2m to $950k, the decryption tool provided had to be run on each and every affected device on the company's network. It took five days to decrypt 20 servers and "10 business days" to unlock 1,000 desktop computers. Neither company was going to pay out and forget the incident. The English reinsurer hired Chainalysis Inc, a "blockchain investigations firm...

Online Defamation Laws (Criminal) in India With Section 66A of The IT Act,2000 struck down by Hon. Supreme Court of India in Shreya Singhal's Case, victims have left only with options in other laws based on words and actions of the accused online. Section 504 Indian Penal Code- Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace. (using bad words, curse words like BC, MC, F*ck U e.t.c) “whoever intentionally insults, and thereby gives provocation to any person, intending or knowing it to be likely that such provocation will cause him to break the public peace, or to commit any other offence, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both”. Section 469 of the IPC states that whoever commits forgery, intending that the document or electronic record forged shall harm the reputation of any party, or knowing that it is likely to be used for that purpose shall be punished with impris...

RBI 2020 new  Credit card Debit Cars rules: What cardholders must know To avoid card frauds U should know the following- All debits and credit cards, including those which are reissued, can only be used for domestic transactions at ATMs and point of sale (PoS) terminals at the time of issuance / reissuance of the card. "At the time of issue/re-issue, all cards (physical and virtual) shall be enabled for use only at contact-based points of usage within India," RBI said. Banks can deactivate current cards and reissue them based on risk perception. RBI has asked all banks and other card-issuing companies to disable online payment services of all debit and credit cards that have never been used for online/contactless transactions. RBI told banks and card issuers: “Existing cards which have never been used for online (card not present) /international/contactless transactions shall be mandatorily disabled for this purpose.” All those Debit Card and Credit Card which are never...

IT Act is a Special Act: case laws By Advocate (Dr.) Prashant Mali Sharat Babu Digumarti   Vs . Govt. of NCT of Delhi.  MANU /SC/1592/2016.  Gagan Harsh Sharma and Ors. Vs. The State of Maharashtra and Ors. MANU/MH/3012/2018. Ajay Murlidhar Batheja Vs. The State Of Maharashtra and Ors. MANU/MH/  /2018. Special Law:   A law that applies to a place or especially to a particular member or members of a class of persons or things in the same situation but not to the entire class and that is unconstitutional if the classification made is arbitrary or without a reasonable or legitimate justification or basis 1. The Indian Parliament enacted in the Fifty-First Year of the Republic of India, an act called the Information Technology Act, 2000. This act is based on the resolution A/RES/51/162 adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on the 30 TH January 1997 regarding the model law on the electronic commerce earlier adopted ...

Child porn in Mobile: Beware ? As a part of the police crackdown against those who had viewed, downloaded, stored or shared child sexual abuse content (child pornography) online. Sumit Kumar Kalra  a 49-year-old man was arrested at Chennai Airport on Saturday night for downloading child sexual abuse material and sharing . Arrested accused is a computer science graduate and owns a shop that sells gym equipment on Montieth Road, Egmore. On Saturday night, as he landed in Chennai from Delhi, the police of the Crime against Women and Children wing nabbed him. The police had received information about the crime from the Us based  National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children , which has the technology to monitor child pornography material shared online. India reported a maximum number of online child sexual abuse cases,  followed by Thailand, which shows the data by US-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).   India acc...