Advocate (Dr.) Prashant Mali's Blog

Case Laws for WhatsApp Group Admin Liability “ A vicarious criminal liability can be fastened only by reason of a provision of a statute and not otherwise. In the absence of a special penal law  creating vicarious liability, an Admin of a WhatsApp group cannot be held liable for the objectionable post by a group member." a crime was registered against the first accused under Sections 67B (a),(b) and (d) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Sections 13, 14 and 15 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offence Act. Manual v. State of Kerala [2022] CRL MC No.3654 of 2021 WhatsApp group admin can’t be held liable for member’s post unless common intention shown held by Bombay High Court : Alleged Crime was under Section 67 of the IT Act, 2000 (related to obscenity) Kishor v State of Maharashtra [2021] GCtR 787 (Nagpur, Bombay HC) 01/03/2021 in Criminal Application (APL) 573/2016 " Common intention cannot be established in a case of WhatsApp service user merely acting a...

Police need a  warrant to ask password from the accused: Case Law Case Law Details: Virendra Khanna Vs State of Karnataka  Petition No. 11759 of 2020 (GM-RES) A search warrant is necessary for the examination of a smartphone, laptop, or email account of an accused. Held by Karnataka High Court. An accused cannot be constrained to disclose the password/passcode of his gadgets or accounts through a mere order of a trial court to cooperate with. Section 100 of CrPC provides general procedures that need to be necessarily followed at the time of the search. I say that if the Investigation officer leaks the data A case can be filed under section 72 of The IT Act,2000. A search warrant is a written order which is issued by a Judge/ Magistrate or a Court to a police officer or any other person authorizing them to conduct a search of a person, location, or vehicle for evidence of a crime and confiscate illegal evidence of a crime. The court in Kalinga Tubes Ltd. v. D. Suri and in man...

EMP Warfare as a part of Cyber Warfare EMPs, or electromagnetic pulses, are intense bursts of electromagnetic energy that can be utilized to damage electronics. Man-made nuclear EMPS are impressive weapons of war that are sparingly used due to their highly destructive nature. China’s has ability to conduct an Electromagnetic Pulse attack on the India. China now has super-EMP weapons, knows how to protect itself against an EMP attack, and has developed protocols to conduct a first-strike attack, even as they deny they would ever do so. China has the most active  ballistic missile development program in the world , so this is doubly troubling. Allegedly China used stolen U.S. technology to develop at least three types of high-tech weapons to attack the electric grid and key technologies that could cause a surprise “Pearl Harbor” attack that could produce a deadly blackout to the entire India. EMPs are one of those things that many people think is fake, or over-blown, or a consp...

Methods  for traceability  of WhatsApp messages - IT Rules 2021 WhatsApp traceability can be achieved in two methods —  1. Use of digital signatures  2. The metadata approach.  However, it is still open to question whether either can discharge its legal objective of establishing criminal liability. The digital signature approach may not be foolproof because it is susceptible to impersonation. Further, the approach would require the intermediary to keep the private key of the encrypted digital signature and decrypt when ordered by the court or the government. But the key will then become vulnerable to hacking by bad actors and once successful will create havoc, targeting innocent users. This approach with other precautions can be used successfully. The metadata contains data pertaining to source, time, date, location and other attributes minus the content. But for traceability, a humongous amount of data would be commandeered for which the security agencies neith...

The Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA) law goes into effect on January 1, 2023. The law applies only to businesses with large amounts of consumer data and does not apply to employee or business-to-business (B2B) data. The CDPA also provides broad exemptions, including for financial institutions subject to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) and covered entities and business associates subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Broad in scope, the CDPA incorporates aspects of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Below are outlined some key aspects of the CDPA and have compared it to these other comprehensive privacy laws. Who Must Comply with the CDPA? Businesses are subject to the CDPA if  both  of the following criteria are met: They either conduct business in Virginia or produce products or services that are targeted to Virginia resi...

Social media, OTT Platforms, online news websites regulation in india (Information Technology Rules, 2021 ) This are the Rules framed pursuant to the powers conferred by Section 79(2)(c) and Section 69A(2) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 provides for classification of films and other entertainment programmes, including web series, bring digital news platforms within the ambit of regulations covering print and electronic media and attempts to rein in social media intermediaries.  Guidelines for intermediary and social media intermediary  The Rules define 'significant social media intermediary' as social media with users above the threshold notified by the Central government.  The Rules mandate that social media intermediary should 'enable the identification of the first originator of the information on its computer, as "may be required by a judicial or or an order passed by the Competent authority" and such an order shall only be passed for  the purposes of...

Admission & Confession in Cyber Crime (IT Act,2000) Cases Digital evidence: reliability When one examines the issue of reliability of digital evidence there arises a number of questions. Should forensic software (digital evidence) be entitled to a judicial presumption of reliability? When, if ever, should courts compel non-party forensic software vendors to reveal proprietary source code to party experts in order to assure a fairer trial? And what does reliability mean in the context of digital evidence anyway?  The term ‘Admission’ means stating something or admitting something other than guilt. So now the question is does confession also meant the same. The answer is no, as there is a very thin life difference between confession and admission. The word ‘confession’ means acknowledgement of guilt made by a person after an offence has been committed. ADMISSION (Sec. 17-23, 31) According to sec. 17 of the Indian Evidence Act, “An admission is a statement, oral or documentary or ...