Cyber misogyny of female journalists

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

When the image of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian boy who was found lying dead on a sea shore in Turkey surfaced on internet, social media including Twitter were flooded with posts expressing concerns for war refugees.  One of the worst causes of destruction of human civilisation is definitely the war. When as a young student I used to read about World Wars, I used to believe that wars are parts of history and this would never occur in modern age. But my childish thoughts were smashed with growing up years when I learnt that wars in different forms still exist and they are more devastating than before.  The television channels used to show live broadcasting of soldiers preparing for counter attack in borders and like many other young women I often used to think that such reporting are done by men. But I was proved wrong. Be it  Barkha Dutt’s reporting on Kargil war between India and Pakistan  or her coverage of 2008 Taaj attack in Mumbai , like many other girls, we knew Barkha as a reporter meant to cover risky areas. Remember Maya Mirchandani , the reporter who was one of the last to cover Sri Lankar President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s campaign rally when the Kumaratunga was hurt due to bomb explosion ? Following female journalists like Barkha or Maya, many female journalists came up to take this venture of reporting war crimes, political hooliganism, scams etc literally risking their lives.  Among these brave women brigade, I have my own cousins who have also suffered physical injuries in the course of their duties.

But with the advent of digital communication technology, attacks on women journalists have become more organised, personal and also patterned.  Sagarika Ghosh, one of the senior most women journalists in India was one of the worst victims of Twitter trolls.  In my BBC interview (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-22378366) regarding attacks on women on social media I expressed my anguish over the issue of lack of empathy and sympathy from the part of criminal justice machinery to the female victims, especially in case of trolling or bullying, even if they are celebrities . Undoubtedly, this is a major cause which motivates the perpetrators to abuse such women.   In my recent publication titled “A retrospective analysis of S.66A: Could S.66A of the Information Technology Act be reconsidered for regulating “bad talk” in the internet?” Published in Indian Student Law Review (ISLR), 2015(1), pp 98-128, I took up Sagarika’s case  as a prime example as how women may be victimised online  irrespective of their position in the society. They may also be targeted by misogynist posts including online sexual abuse.  The reasons may vary from professional jealousy from own colleagues, workplace harassment to even dislike by members of particular group or organisation, who may motivate supporters to individually attack the women concerned online.  The very recent case of the Delhi Journalist Swati Chaturvedi, who became a victim of  sexist trolling allegedly by another senior journalist  may be seen as a good example in this case( http://indiasamvad.co.in/6524/showstory/Beware-of-sexist-remarks-Delhi-journo-to-become-first-to-be-arrested-for-Twitter-trolling).  But it would be wrong to presume that such atrocities happen only in India.  Consider the case of Sharmila Seyyid, a SriLanka based war crime reporter; because of her work, she was attacked online and once Twitter and other social media were also used to spread the news of her death and the morphed picture which showed her raped. She was very much alive but these tricks were taken up to send her death threats and make her family feel extremely insecure about her life (See http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/sharmila-seyyid-online-trolling-death-threats/article7109863.ece). But she is not the only one Sri Lankan female reporter to be victimised online. Another Sri Lankan war crime reporter named Dilshy Banu, who is also the writer of four books, was also attacked online. Dilshy, unlike other women was not trolled in the social media. But whenever anyone searches her name with the key words of her name, the search engine gets flooded with web links of pornographic sites which has her name with a slight change in the spelling. Dilshy contacted me for help and permitted me to use her case study.  It is unfortunate that similar to many other women journalists, Dilshy’s name has been added to vicious misogynist posts on internet and these web links may stay for a long time like those ugly posts targeting other women journalists, which are still floating in some sites, unless search engines themselves pull down those web links. on a positive side,the number of such links showing porn contents which are tagged with Dilshy's name are reducing. But the process is slow. But as may be seen, such act of pulling down of misogynist posts needs the cooperation not only from the NGOs, but also from the criminal justice machinery where the victim should report the crime for getting a legal recognition of the offence, the search engines as the intermediaries and of course the general public who may help these brave women by ‘positive Google bombing’.  It is understandable that like India, many other south Asian countries including Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan etc may not have well developed laws to prevent cyber misogyny targeting women; and even if they do, the foreign based intermediaries may need to work more cooperatively to help prevent such sorts of victimisation since the viral nature of the offensive posts may  make the individual stake holders almost impossible to erase them completely.  It is unfortunate to note that this may be one of the reasons that more orthodox countries including Iran etc, periodically block many websites including Google or may even create prohibitory sanctions for using internet.  

It is understandable that all of us have freedom of speech and expression and as I mentioned in my article on S.66A, the courts, not only in India, but all over the world, are slowly expanding the scope of free speech guarantee.  The latest example is obviously the Elonis decision in the US on which I wrote my blog @ http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.in/2015/06/the-elonis-decision-why-would-indian.html . But that does not mean that people can take internet or digital communication technology to continue attack on women, including journalists.  

Let us join hands to stop online victimisation of women irrespective of jurisdiction.

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. (2015), “Cyber misogyny of female journalists”, 9^th September, 2015, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/

The great debate on porn-ban: my views

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

August, 2015 started with some not so surprising news with the government of India banning around 800 websites who were allegedly having porn contents, and then again relaxing the ban. The government clarified that now the ban would be strictly for those websites who distribute child porn materials. Finally the Supreme Court of India came down with its unique observation that neither the government, nor the courts can dictate what to do for adults who watch porn contents within the four walls of their own houses.  This is indeed a unique observation from the Supreme court especially from the perspective of privacy rights of adults. Debates ran in several media including the electronic media regarding banning the porn sites, which directly hit a crucial privacy right: right to watch contents within the four corners of one’s own home. I was asked by some regarding views. Yes. I support banning porn sites. But only when, the websites have failed to stick to their due diligence policies. Regarding whether individuals should be allowed to view porn contents in private: I would still say, No they should not be if the contents are violate  laws. I say this, because if the courts make it punishable to watch every porn content at home, then millions including you and me would be indicted irrespective of why we got to watch it. A very simple example: how many of you had received gang rape videos asking for identifying the accused? If you have watched it even for a few seconds and circulated the same, then tell me, why and how the content stands apart from contents which may be categorised as porn contents which violate basic human rights? If such video/s came to you via WhatsApp or Facebook , would you consider asking the government to ban it ? In one of the conferences I expressed my concern in this regard and urged every one present in the conference to not to circulate to any friend/s, groups etc except to the police any such videos even to identify the accused. Nonetheless, I was heavily criticised.

          India had probably world’s first civilisation where watching erotica or creating erotica by way of sculptures and documenting about erotica were considered absolutely legal .but neither Kamasutra, the ancient book on erotica, nor any erotic sculpture advocated for abusing  any living being including men, women and children and even animals for driving sexual pleasure. With the advent of time and technology, human psychology in regard to consumption of erotica faced a drastic change. With colonial rules, came the period where slaves were used in inhuman ways for deriving sexual pleasure. I have documented some of such incidences in my article titled “Online Victimization of Andaman Jarawa Tribal Women: An Analysis of the ‘Human Safari’ YouTube Videos (2012) and its Effects”( Halder D., & Jaishankar, K. (2014), British Journal of Criminology, 54(4), 673-688. (Impact factor 1.556). DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azu026.) With this, the historians, sociologists, legal researchers and criminologists could frame up how human being were abused  for sexual pleasure, which were ethical and legal for some and unethical and illegal for many. Came the era of cinemas and televisions and the production/distribution of the erotica contents became even easier. There were cinemas with “A” signs which were produced only to cater the needs of adults. But in no time these movies found their ways to personal television sets where not only adults, but children also could see such erotica of course secretly. Point to be noted here is, after several attempts, none could ban production and distribution of such films. On the other hand, several stakeholders started realising  that awareness creation among parents and children may yield better results to make them understand why such contents should not be consumed for home viewing purpose, especially when there are growing children around.  But could this actually stop children from becoming over matured in regard to understanding sex related issues? Perhaps no. during my teenage days I got to see many of peers borrowing books which had erotica contents as parts of the text. We were not allowed to carry such books or pictures to the schools. But I know many of my friends secretly enjoyed those materials just how their elders may do . slowly I understood that this is because our inquisitiveness regarding sex was suppressed right at the time when we should have been told about this by our teachers or elders .

          Then came the internet era. One of the worst forms of violence against women took place in the cyber space when women were abused to create erotica contents for the porn markets.  Children were neither spared. But because children need more care and protection, their cause was highlighted more. Some of the websites did cater child porn materials with children as actors. The stakeholders who wanted to bring a blanket ban on porn sites not only wanted to emphasise upon the fact that child actors may be abused for creation of such contents, but also that such porn contents may encourage others including adults and children to take up similar measures to abuse other children.  Laws were created in both Information technology Act (S.67B)and as well as Protection of children from sexual offences Act (POCSO)(s.13) whereby such creation and distribution and also consumption were prohibited. These laws actually extended their scopes to the websites who would be hosting such contents as well. However, the websites are already armed with their own due diligence policies which stem out from US laws. Hence in India also websites were given an advantageous position whereby their own mechanism can detect the illegal contents, remove it from public viewing and block the uploader from uploading any such content again. It was only when that they fail to take notice of the reports made by the victims themselves, observers who feel that such contents are objectionable and the criminal justice administration, that websites can be indicted  and the veil of exemption from being directly liable is lifted (S.79, Information Technology Act). In this regard several rules are also created as intermediary guideline rules.  But adults were also given consideration while creating laws against porn or obscenity. S.67 of the information Technology Act 2000( amended in 2008) prohibits creating/publishing/distributing obscene materials in the electronic form and S.67A prohibits publishing/distributing sexually explicit materials in the electronic media.  It must be noted that when we speak about adults, no law recognises the term “pornography” as an offence or part of any offence. There is no legal definition as such of the term. What does it mean then? Is creating/ distributing/ producing pornography legal? Are the websites who are created solely for the purpose of catering pornography legal? Is watching pornography legal ?  No! it may not be legal when pornography is understood in the meaning of sexually explicit object.  It is neither legal when the content so created involves other privacy issues including voyeurism, revenge porn, sextortion etc.  Some of the Indian laws do recognise the above issues, some remain un recognised. The question is, are consumers/viewers and the websites liable for consuming/ catering such contents as adult porn materials? it is interesting to note that  if the content is erotica, does not fall within the category of Ss. 292 IPC(sale etc of obscene books, pamphlets etc), 354C IPC( voyeurism), 66E( violation of privacy), 67 and 67A, 67B of the Information Technology Act,2000(amended in 2008). As the Supreme court has observed, the viewers are not responsible when they view these contents in private.  But yes, viewers may be liable only when it amounts sexual harassment within the meaning of various laws in India including sexual harassment of women at workplace (prevention, prohibition and redressal)  Act, 2013 etc. it may also amount to an offence if the viewer forces the partner or spouse to watch the same against his/her wish. Of course, in the later situation, the burden of proof lies much upon the complainant if he/she wants to establish the fact that such activities were done in a course of mental torture and domestic violence  to the spouse. It must be noted that the websites are neither responsible if they have observed due diligence.  

But then how should we manage the huge growth of porn industry which is largely dependent upon the contributors of home-made porn and consumers? I feel here comes the question of  society’s and not the court’s  or the government’s lone responsibility . Thousands of porn contents are fed in the websites every minute. These sites include exclusive adult sites, social media like Facebook, You Tube etc and also mobile messaging services like WhatsApp.  When we speak about amateur porn contents, we may note that majority of such contents are actually voyeur porn, revenge porn and sexted contents which got leaked due to various reasons.  When an adult prefers to watch porn content, he would definitely not know whether the same is a legal content or an illegal content.  Just because the content is catered through adult sites, the content may not become offensive. Similarly, just because the content is catered through social media like Facebook or YouTube, it may not become a legal content. Consider the gang rape videos. It does not make legal to watch or circulate such videos just because they are circulated to identify the accused. Even if the victim is not shown, the video harms the privacy of the victim in the same fashion as it may do if it would have shown the victim.  In that case, can the government block Facebook or YouTube or WhatsApp because such videos were circulated through them?  They can not. There is a procedure to make the websites take down these contents. Further, what would be the effect of banning if only Indian viewers in India would be barred from viewing some contents but contributors staying abroad upload  revenge porn, voyeur videos  from foreign IP addresses ? Would that not be more victimising for victims whose privacy has been violated? Such contributors would not be able to show such contents to Indian viewers, but the contents can be visible anywhere else in the world. In such cases, how would the victim be able to prove the case if he/she is provided only with the link and that does not work within Indian jurisdiction? we need to understand that in all over the world, police still needs sensitisation to deal with cyber crimes especially against women and in such cases, the victims are bound to face secondary harassment in the hands of police as well.   By saying this I argue that websites as organisations must share the social responsibility to stop victimisation of women, men and children. Websites thrive in the market because of its contributors and consumers.  It is only when that the websites take a strong note on contribution of contents which are violative of laws as well as privacy of individuals that the illegal contribution may be brought down. Coming to the consumption, it would be wrong to say that all consumers of porn contents are perverts. Porn contents may be used as sexual stimuli and this factor has been noted by medical researchers especially in sexology, reproduction science etc. But such stimuli should be used for healthy sexual relationships and purposes. Not for violating rights. I completely agree with the views that porn contents do affect youth who get indulged in rape or sexual molestation just to experience direct pleasure from similar situations in real life. Who are responsible for letting the youth consume such contents  for unhealthy reasons? Definitely the  elders, the teachers who never explained about sex education and basic  guidelines to respect the privacy of women, men and children  in schools and homes , and the peers who seek to share the forbidden pleasure.  

We need to understand that blanket ban on porn sites would never be effective to stop victimisation of women, men and children either in real life or in cyber space. Instead of blanket ban or blocking the traffic for certain websites to all the broadband network consumers, the government should consider  taking up policies to detect the rackets who are spreading such contents to the websites, the faulty websites who are failing in practicing due diligence and of course to train the criminal justice organisation to be able to handle to reports of the victimisation within shortest time. We need to understand that porn contents are spread not only through adult websites, but also through every day accessible mechanisms such WhatsApp or even a simple MMS. That is because the contents may be stored in the personal devices and law can not enable any official to screen every device to detect whether porn contents are stored  and what types of contents are stored.  This would again bring debates about government surveillance and privacy. Truly, you can not shoot messenger, but can declare war against the devils that use the messenger for destructing peace.

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. (2015), “The Great Debate on Porn Ban: my views”, 12^th August, 2015 , published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/

#Selfiewithdaughter with a tinge of misogyny

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

In my blog sometimes back I wrote about privacy issues in regard to sharing selfies in social media @ http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.in/search/label/selfie . I myself am a selfie fan but as I said in my earlier blog, I am concerned about the privacy issues and I avoid sharing selfies publicly. I broke this rule when I started campaigning for a novel cause: for spreading awareness regarding wearing helmet. I created a hashtag #selfieinhelmet and put my own #selfieinhelmet in Twitter and Facebook to invite my friends and general public to share theirs. Till now, I haven’t received much success except a few women friends of mine who wear helmets despite being conscious about their hairstyle.  I shared my concern with almost all the news media  Tweet handles I follow, some celebrities and my friends. Many of them retweeted, shared #selfieinhelmet. I am still awaiting for people to share their real #selfieinhelmet. But while doing this, I came across another novel idea : #selfiewithdaughter to boost the campaign for raising girl children by families especially in northern Indian regions where daughters are still considered as ‘burdens’ to the families. Started by Sunil Jaglan, the sarpanch of Bibipur village in Hariyana to strengthen the Central government’s save the daughter campaign, #selfiewithdaughter became immensely trending issue when the Prime Minister Narendra Modi  invited all parents, especially fathers to share their #selfiewithdaughter . Social media like Twitter and Facebook was flooded with selfies of proud fathers with their lovely daughters. Women also started sharing their selfies with daughters and finally I got to see many #selfiewithduaghter with both the parents lovingly sharing the space with their daughters. It was a wonderful feeling indeed. But at the same time, many including I myself felt that the #selfiewithdaughter ‘movement’ must be guarded with a note of caution : we all know the presence of paedophiles, women abusers and pranksters  in the social media and how they may work to collect images of girls and women to make illegal and unethical money  from porno industry. I shared my thought by Tweeting  “#selfiewithdaughter may not always b safe in#socialmedia” through my tweet handle @DrDebaratiH . Within a few minutes I got to see the highest  trending topic changed into Kavita Krishnan, and #selfiewithdaughter came down to the second position. The power of social media is amazing!  Why an individual activist should be pulled up in social media by hundreds of Tweeteratties amidst this beautiful campaign of save the daughters? Because Kavita opined her concern about privacy of daughters. But her words were harsher than anyone else and it directly targeted the Prime Minister himself. From her Tweet handle @ Kavita_krishnan she Tweeted “careful beforesharing #selfiewithdaughter with #LameduckPM. He has a record of stalkingdaughters”. Nonetheless, many did not like her post. This was nothing to do with the present #selfiewithdaughter campaign apparently, but  it was in relation to (as the news media tells) an old allegation where controversy brewed up when apparently a particular  political leader was audiotaped conversing with police officers for tracking a particular woman under the direction of “saheb” (Narendra Modi, the then chief Minister of Gujarat). Personally I could not fully agree with  Krishnan for  her this particular statement made in relation to #selfiewithdaughter campaign. She had used her right to speech and expression to opine her concern from political perspective; but I understand that it may have an underlying concern regarding breaching of privacy of women and girl children in the social media. But I felt her concern could have been shown more neutrally keeping the political issue aside. However, we need to remember that she has every right to express her thoughts in her own ways. But this very thought of her attracted trolls to diversify the campaign of #selfiewithdaughter and bring Krishnan in (dirty) limelight. Several people started speaking about raping her, calling her names and inviting others to join them in targeting her in their online trolling. News media immediately started flashing the Tweets targeting Kavita Krishnan as well. To some, the real purpose for #selfiewithdaughter became mockery of main issue.

        The question is, how far people can be ‘free’ to express their opinion especially if it is a death threat or rape threat or calling a woman with derogatory names? The courts in our country in many landmark judgements have repeatedly said that political satires, political criticisms etc may not always fall in the restricted speech category as these are essential to keep a healthy democracy alive. In this connection,  I would very much look forward to see the court’s reaction if anyone wants to stress upon the issue that Krishnan herself is also liable to justify her statement of calling a certain political personality a stalker of girls. But I reiterate, the underlying holistic concern in her statement which is related  to the safety of girls and women and also the possible online abuse of the girls due to large scale sharing of the images  in the ongoing #selfiewithdaughter campaigning must not be ignored. Coming to the derogatory comments targeting women, I would not be surprised if some trolls raise their voice stating that if Krishnan can call the PM a ‘stalker of girls’ then why she cannot be targeted with remarks which they feel, may describe her best! Here comes testing of the level of maturity of a healthy civil society. I would rather refer to my previous blog post on Elonis Decision by the US Supreme Court, regarding which scholars and activists like Chemaly and Franks stated that “.......the ruling suggests that the determination of what constitutes threat rests with the speaker and not his audience.”(See  See Chemali & Franks, Supreme Court may have online abuse easier, published on June 3, 2015 @ http://time.com/3903908/supreme-court-elonis-free-speech/?xid=tcoshare). Agreed that this case was about a man who did not take name of the estranged wife whom he was actually targeting, and in Krishnan’s case, she had received direct threatening comments,   our courts in India still needs to take their own decisions on rape threats, derogatory comments against women in the social media especially when the issue presents sharing opinion on such issues involving large scale public awareness campaigns slightly tinged by political propaganda. But when seen from the perspective of targeting a particular woman (irrespective of who she is and why did she attract the trolls) with derogatory comments, I must say, I condemn such abuses. May be the protesters against Krishnan’s comments could have considered to limit their thoughts to pointing out why she is wrong in this particular context, or why #selfiewithdaughter should go ahead ignoring her remarks. But people should restrain from subjecting women to ‘online entertainment’ by posting rape threats or calling her derogatory names which lowers the morals of a woman. The same thing continues to happen with many other female activists, journalists and writers who stand up and express their concerns through their own ways. But unfortunately the police and the courts remain almost always silent. Even though our laws (The Indian Penal code, Information Technology Act, Indecent representation of women (prohibition) Act etc.) do speak about prohibitory provisions, none of them actually touches cyber bullying or trolling in the cyber space and in particular, bullying or trolling with death or rape threats or derogatory comments targeting women. S.509 IPC do condemn word, gesture etc harming the modesty of women, but it does not cater the need fully. It is understandable that even if there are laws which broadly or narrowly touches the issue of abuse of women in the cyber space, there needs to a positive network to execute the effect of the law; this includes the willing and trained  police officers, the lawyers and courts who would be compassionate to the cause and  the social media who are willing to pull down direct threat messages once they are alarmed by the victim as well as the criminal justice machinery. Above all, it is the victims who should come up to report and cooperate with criminal justice machinery and face the challenge in proper way by not encouraging others to indulge in counter trolling or bullying.

Let us hope the civil society wakes up with this understanding that if freedom of speech and expression comes with a duty to exercise the same for the benefit of the society and not for causing harm to others, especially women. 

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. (2015), #Selfiewithdaughter with a tinge of misogyny” published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/