Can women really exercise right to speech? At what cost?

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

Deeply hurt by the action of the Mumbai police against the two girls I am back to my blogger’s dashboard again. India is going through a wonderful changing period. The young generation is finally understands that there is some thing beyond school studies, competitive exams and medical and engineering degrees.  The two old heads may finally look forward towards fulfilling their dreams, the Missile man Abdul Kalam, who invited fresh brains to join politics and Anna Hazare who made young generation understand that fighting for a corruption free India is more important than ‘feeding’ the ‘babu’s unnecessarily. Yes, India is running towards a bright future and that has been made possible largely by a few US companies like the Facebook, Twitter and Google. The law pundits, human right activists and the brave teachers must feel good that the young generation is opening up their thoughts. We always hear that a democracy becomes stronger when right to speech is enjoyed to the maximum. But off late, I am getting to see some chilling effects to this great thought. Many often, those who are really misusing right to speech within the meaning of Article 19(2) of the Indian constitution somehow successfully remain out of reach of the police and the judiciary.  But those who may be perfectly within the ambit of Article 19(1) of the constitution are being hooked up by the police for wrong reasons.   The law which has become (in)famous for gagging the speech in the internet is section 66A of  the Information Technology Act, 2008.The two three instances of questioning the political big shots through social media and the consequences thereof  did establish a bad example which questioned the core existence of section 66A of the Information technology Act, 2008. It prohibits transmitting though communication technology a)any  information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character; or b) any  information which the sender knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, or ill will, persistently makes by making use of such computer resource or a communication device, c) any electronic mail or electronic mail message for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or recipient about the origin of such messages. 

While the rest of India may think that it chills the freedom of speech and it must be scrapped, I support it’s existence;but not at the cost of its misuse because I feel it does help victims especially women victims of cyber crime.  I am getting confusing informations about the legal provisions that have been used to arrest the two girls who spoke about the situation of Mumbai on the funeral of  Bal Thackery in Facebook.  The Times of India mentioned about section 64A of the Information Technology Act which was used to book the girl ( see http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/21-year-old-girl-arrested-for-Facebook-post-slamming-Bal-Thackeray/articleshow/17276979.cms), while NDTV told that it was section 505 of the Indian Penal Code, which was used. Section 64 of the Information Technology Act, 2000(amended in 2008) does not have any trailing provision, neither it speaks about offences( it speaks about recovery of compensation or penalty in special reference to cyber appellate tribunal’s power. It says “A penalty imposed or compensation awarded under this Act, if it is not paid, shall be recovered as an arrear of land revenue and the license or the Electronic Signature Certificate, as the case may be, shall be suspended till the penalty is paid.”). Presumably, it should have been section 66A and not section 64A. Section505 (2) of the IPC on the other hand prohibits issuing of statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill- will between classes.  The recent news said that the girls have got the bail and their lawyer has pressed that the concerned statement doesn’t fall under the category of either of these laws. 

True, Bal Thackery’s funeral may have made a section of people deeply mourned. But does that mean that no one should express one’s own feeling regarding this?  I can not support chilling of the right to speech by misusing a law especially like section 66A which has great potential to prohibit truly unprotected speech. Think of so many common men and women who had to suffer due to the standstill condition of a city. Did the veteran really want this? Probably no. But look at the aftermath; the IPC section was applied to directly book her for an offence which she may have never intended to create.  If the reports of vandalism are true, then the police now must take action to prevent any further untowardly incidents against the people at large and also  against the girl. See the first blow on her; she has become traumatised to go to Facebook again. I fear, this may be the beginning of a long lasting 'bad phase' for her. My earnest appeal to the society that let my fear not come true.  Sadly I note that she created one more example that when women speak their minds they inevitably invite trouble, whether online or offline. Let peace prevail.

**The author does not intend to hurt anybody’s political or religious sentiments. This is an independent view of the author and the author has expressed her views in her own right towards exercising freedom of speech. If anybody feels hurt, the author apologises in advance.

Please Note: Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article, please cite it as “Halder D. (2012), “Can women really exercise right to speech? At what cost? ”, 19thNovember,2012, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/

Why do Indian women feel reluctant to report cases of cyber victimisation?

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

Women victims in the cyber space are increasing in number. The patterns which are mostly followed are creation of fake profiles either with the picture of the victim  that the perpetrator already had with him, or with the picture and informations that the perpetrator got accessed to through hacking in to the private emails / social media profiles of the victim. In my paper presented in the Sweden criminology symposium this year, I had shown ( excerpts of my presentation are available  @ http://www.criminologysymposium.com/symposium/event-information/2012/archive/news/2012-10-05-risk-behaviours-increase-exposure-to-cyber-crime.html)  that such sorts of victimisations also play big role in damaging the reputation of the victim in the marriage market and can even break marriages. Fear of this often makes women victims withdrawn from reporting the crimes and encourages them to take the other way round to remove the offensive content many often by hacking (see excerpts from my presentation in the above link). But it would be very wrong to say that women are only the victims.  There are couple of examples to show that women are turning into perpetrators also. In my above presentation I had shown how women are turning into “victim-turned offender”. Apart from this, many women are also following the path of male cyber perpetrators by creating fake avatars of other women in the social media. But how many women victims really turn up to report?

The recent case of singer Chinmayee’s online victimisation which included threats and obscene contents against her, created ripple. Quite simultaneously, I got to see many write ups which questioned the power of Tweets and the power of section 66A of the Information Technology Act which very broadly prohibits offensive speech in the cyber space. I also came across some write-ups which pointed out that even the singer also had used her right to speech. This reminds me of the noted writer Meena Kandasamy whom I am very fortunate to have in my own Facebook friend list. Meena was also targeted for her bold feminist ideologies. But these two women didn’t keep quite when they were targeted. Both of them reported the incidences to the police.  There are many women cine actors and TV actors  who refuse to bow down to the people who play with their images in the cyber space. But not to forget, these women refuse to recognise the after effects of police-reporting and media trails of the case as ‘social stigma’. General women victims are not courageous enough to take this path ( I had researched on this issue in my paper Halder D., & Jaishankar, K. (2011). Cyber Gender Harassment and Secondary Victimization: A Comparative Analysis of US, UK and India. Victims and Offenders, 6(4), 386-398). There are legal provisions through which women victims can obtain protection to their identity. But hardly any one is aware about it. At the same time, many women victims feel that such legal provisions are ultimately for a ‘namesake’ and they don't really keep their own promises. The recent press release by the DGP Hyderabad (see http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-11-09/hyderabad/35015301_1_cyber-crime-acid-attacks-women-victims) assuring the women victims of cyber crime about the protection of their identity is a welcome move. It is a hard truth that we have patriarchal system and women are judged by their morality not only in the marriage market, but many women do believe that this would affect their credibility in the job market as well. Like this officer, if other officers take steps to publicly announce that victims of cyber crimes would be protected from identity leakage may be women victims can get enough strength to seek proper help rather than improper help which would finally push them to even more dangerous zone.

Wish you all a happy and prosperous Deepavali

Please Note: Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article, please cite it as “Halder D. (2012), “Why do Indian women feel reluctant to report  cases of cyber victimisation?”, 10^th November,2012, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com

Topless and shameless women always top the internet search lists

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER
 A woman can be made (in)‘famous’ if she is portrayed ‘topless’ or ‘shameless’. The ongoing tussle over the issue of "topless Kate" is a glaring example  as how women are repeatedly victimised through the internet, be it  the Duchess of Cambridge,or any other woman who becomes the  victim of voyeurism. If  the victim is a woman who was not known to the world previously, expect her to be ‘re known ’ (if not well known) by some people whom she never expected to know her in her life time.  As on date, I got to see huge media attention to the power of the internet for spreading religious clashes in almost all over the world; along with that 'Kate Middleton' became even more hugely searched topic in the search engines not because of her royal position, but because of her perfectly toned naked upper body which is now prominent due to the French magazine which breached into her privacy. Topless Kate was available with hundreds of  Twitter users also; when I was jotting down my thoughts  for this blog on 17^th September, she was still being displayed in spite of the warnings from the British royals, civil charges and amidst of plans for slapping criminal charges. But this particular woman belongs to those layers of people who know how to handle privacy breaching cases and can afford to slap criminal charges against a magazine and subsequently she may also successfully stop the world wide net including the social media giant Twitter from distributing her private pictures. The ‘Rian Gigg super injunction case’, also from the UK, would show the way to tame public social media with private laws. Quite similar to her is the case of BettinaWulff, the wife of former German president, who has been portrayed as a prostitute; Google as a search engine has made her more (in)famous. She has also applied private laws to prevent public humiliation through internet.

          Note that both Kate and Bettina belong to European Union countries whose private laws are daring to control the First Amendment Guarantees for Free Speech and Expression of the US, which is the core basis for social media including Google, Facebook and Twitter. These two women not only have monetary power to sue these web giants, they can also withstand the bypassing storm of media highlights, criticisms, sympathies, empathies and even appreciation; credit goes to their social and political backgrounds which made them realise what are their rights and what are the duties of others. But this is not the case of thousands of women who may have similar painful victimisation stories like Kate and Bettina. I remember a non-formal conversation with one of the Swiss presenters of Sweden Criminology Symposium this June. I was impressed by his presentation; he further impressed me by giving wonderful information: women in Sweden have cut off the feeling of shame from sexual victimisations like rape. This has actually motivated them to come up and report the matter to the police. Even though he was speaking on child victimisation in the internet, he emphasised the fact that this very feeling of women has actually gone a long way to combat so called online eve-teasers. But in practise, I get to see a very different picture almost every day; women from all over the world, including these European countries face terrible hurdles to seek legal help or police attention when they fall victims of crimes such as Kate or Bettina. Either the police ridicule them, or they can not afford a legal battle due shortage of funds. Resultant, victimisation of women in the net escalates.

Indian experience is no different. Women have not yet gathered that courage like their European or the US counterparts to cut off the feeling of shame; the situation is even worse with the police ineffectiveness. I dont blame the criminal justice system, for they are not given proper chance to increase their understanding in such cases largely due to the attitude of the victims. Well, exceptions are there. A young woman reportedly came up with not so pleasing comments in the Facebook page    regarding the police ineffectiveness for an F.I.R that she lodged for theft of her vehicle (see http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/article3913094.ece). She did not fall prey to typical category of cyber victimisation of women; but she shamelessly displayed her anger and frustration.But she actually did fall a victim as her right to speech and expression was gagged. She represents women who face similar humiliation from criminal justice machinery and finally they give up their claims for fair justice and loose hope from the machinery. It is only when women victims especially of cyber crimes, are given a patient hearing and immediate relief by the law and justice machinery that they can win over the feeling of shame as their western counter parts. This would in turn go a long way in preventing unethical hacking activities too.

Please Note: Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article, please cite it as “Halder D. (2012), “Topless and shameless women always top the internet search lists”, 19^th September,2012, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com