The irresistible misogynist trolls in the social media

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

With another new year, I enter the 9^th year as a blogger. In these 9 years I got to see emergence  of different sorts of crimes against women on the cyber space. While in India the most bothersome type of victimisation targeting women is definitely creating fake avatars in the social media or in the adult networking websites, one can understand that emergence of irresistible misogynist trolls in the social media also claims attention of every one now. Way back in 2013 in my article “Examining the scope of Indecent representation of Women (Prevention) Act, 1986, in the light of Cyber Victimization of Women in India”, published in National Law School Journal, 11, 188-218, I researched about fake avatars and trolls. These topics later found vital places in my Ph.D dissertation thesis only to remind me that these issues will never die until the victim lets them die a natural death either by ignoring them or by reporting the matter to the concerned authorities.

          Trolls find a unique place in social media especially in India because they are not ‘recognised’ by any laws in India as specific ‘offenders’. They feel ‘overpowered’ because of this to express their opinions in several threads, blog posts, media news clippings etc. However, they stand apart from other individuals who express their opinions because of their language in which they communicate: it is impolite, arrogant, hateful and often misogynist. There are different types of trolls who communicate their expression in such way. These may include workplace place trolls, information seeking trolls, lime-light seeking trolls, fan-club trolls, educational institute trolls, activist trolls racist trolls, political trolls, State sponsored trolls and also misogynist trolls in particular. The list may include many other types of trolls existing in social media and on internet in general. Misogynist trolls take to internet and social media to disrupt discussion about women, which may include discussions about welfare measures as well. One such example is this continuous publication of troll posts, which appeared in the official Facebook page of ministry of women and child development (MWCD) when the concerned minister Ms.Maneka Gandhi, announced for several welfare measures for women including the publication of Handbook on sexual harassment of women at workplace. While many stakeholders expressed their opinions in these threads in Facebook, misogynist trolls found their own way to entertain themselves by insulting others, especially women. Among these, one troll post which repeatedly targeted women, expressed anger on the issue of safety of women in the workplace, other expressed anger for the issue of special treatment of women . The bone of the contention was, if women can not endure workplace politics and back biting, which is often seen as ‘workplace harassment’ by researchers and activists, then it is best for women to stay at home and cook for their husbands.  Some women protested the troll posts. Some chose to ignore. But these troll posts started growing in number because no one actually banned them , but may have chose to block them personally. I noticed one such troll post and reported the matter to the Facebook as well as the Facebook page of MWCD.  Fortunately my report was accepted with a positive note from Facebook which removed the misogynist troll posts. But this may be a temporary arrangement for no one was booked for any ‘offence’ and as such, the opinions thus expressed in the FB page of MWCD  may not actually invite any penal sanctions because they are not targeting any particular individual, but women as a whole. Resultant, the troll posts are back in the same FB page in different forms, showcasing hatred towards women in different forms. Their omnipotent presence is felt everywhere even in Twitter or Google hangout and they are becoming more powerful understanding that using hateful words targeting women may make them more (in)famous to gain easy lime light.

          While S.66A of the Information Technology Act was in use, many people had used it as well as misused it. But hardly any one, including the police could properly use it for preventing such misogynist trolls or opinions. I being an ardent fan of positive use of S.66A argued for using it to prevent such misogynist opinions, racists’ comments, personal defamatory remarks etc on many occasions. Unfortunately  in many occasions, either victims were not ready to take the matter to the court and press for a good experiment of this law, or the police showed complete apathy to such issues, which they felt were trivial. Many activists suggested that trolls and bullies may be regulated under different provisions, and S.66A should not be made alive because of this. But I opine differently. In my recent article “A Retrospective Analysis Of Section 66 A:Could Section 66 A 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 documented my opinions in this regard. But as I researched in this particular article, if misogynist trolls can not be regulated because their posts  may not give rise to threat to any particular woman ( as it had happened in the case of Elonis decision), it does not mean that they can grow with no fear of checks and balances. The moment troll posts step into defamatory posts, the victim can and should consider taking the troll to the proper authorities.

          But here again lies the problem of understanding: if the troll posts affect a more ‘powerful victim,’ say for example, a corporate house for any particular product of them, or a particular group of people, they may decide to take action against troll collectively. But if it is an individual victim, the apathy of the social media as well as the police may make the trolls more powerful.  When social media does not take any heed to the plea of the victim to prevent the troll from his activities, the troll may start posting more vigorously with a twisted message as how he remains literally ‘uncontrollable’. It is nothing but provocation to the victim to counter response so that the troll can counter attack.  Unless the police take a serious note by not considering this as trivial, the trolls may continue attacking their victims unless they get bored. It is expected that the concerned authorities, especially the MWCD may take note of the situation and implements regulatory provisions to control such disruptive activities in the name of free speech.

 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. (2016), “The irresistible misogynist trolls in the social media”

8^th February, 2016, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/

How we were able to remove Facebook groups victimising women through creating "Fake Avatars": A success story

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

While 25^th November is celebrated as international day for Elimination of all forms of discrimination of women, I got to see the internet being flooded with “orange the world” messages. This is the particular term taken up by the United Nations to spread awareness about elimination of violence against women and inspired by UN, many stakeholders use #Orangetheworld to express their concern, share experiences and vows to fight against all forms of violence against women. I follow the rest here. I have never opted for any particular app to show my solidarity with any cause including that of Nirbhaya rape case when many men and women opted for showing black spot in their profile picture, judgements on 3^rd gender case which motivated many to opt for rainbow coloured profile or even the recent Paris attack when many opted for French flag colour. This year, when the UN first started their #orangetheworld campaign, the social media spread the colour. I changed both my Facebook and Twitter profiles to stand as one of the millions of ambassadors of the campaign. But did the Convention on elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, which advocates to stop violence against women, really prove beneficial to women especially for online violence cases? We need to consider the issue again and again. 

Couple of days ago a responsible citizen contacted me showing some Facebook links. These were of groups where adult women’s photos were randomly selected, posted and they were made to be “fake avatars” by adding extremely vulgar, indecent sexually explicit comments. These women were picked up mainly because they looked beautiful and had attractive physical structures which were enough to motivate these perverts. Some photos indicated that they may have been parts of promotional photos of television serials or modelling contracts; some were taken from beauty pageants as well. I was not contacted by any women or any of these victims or any women’s group.  The person who alerted me was a man and I salute him. When he came across these groups, he tried to report the groups, the images and the posts attached to the images which actually made these photographs typical fake avatars, rather sex-items. Facebook did not take any action. The main reason for this was, these victims were not children and Facebook did not recognise these posts as offensive. Here I must recall my meeting with child right activists, women’s right activists and transgender right activists at the meeting on Porn Panic Ban conference organised by Point of View and Internet Democracy last month at Delhi.  I was invited to speak about indecent representation of women on internet and I shared information about my work. I used this opportunity to learn about other’s experiences as well.  I got to know more details about the recent sensational case of Manikanta Prabhu, who was arrested for creating Facebook group with images of children and posting violent, sexually explicit messages about these children. This case and the case that I recently dealt with, are quite similar with only one difference: in my case, the victims are adults and in the other, victims were children. The noted child right activist who was incidental in moving the courts and making the accused get arrested in the later case, told me that Facebook refused to recognise the harmful language that were being posted targeting these children because these were mostly in vernacular language. The activist had rightly approached the court against such action of the Facebook.  While dealing with the case relating to adult women, I took note of the experience shared by the activist and mobilised support to report these groups as Facebook may respond to larger volume of reports. However, our  collective attempt remained unsuccessful.

It was only later that Facebook officials responded to my reports and mails and made me understand how to report such indecent representation. While from my side, such groups and posts were reported as 'harassing', seeing the images and the language of the posts, the post reporters who came up to support me, reported the same to Facebook as ‘nudity’. But ‘Nudity’ may have a completely different meaning as per Facebook ‘offence vocabulary’. Here lies the difference between Indian understanding of the term nudity and digital technological as well as western understanding of the term nudity. As such, the volume of the report grew basing on reports on 'nudity' and not 'harassment'. As the officer from Facebook had told, these posts which present indecency in their overall presentation must be reported as ‘harassing’.  I feel extremely happy to say that finally these groups as well as the offending comments were restricted and were taken off by Facebook. This would not have happened unless Facebook considered my reports and again, renewed reports. This should be therefore noted that while Facebook or any other social media may not respond to reports positively, we need to understand the offence- related perspectives of the social media as well. However, it is an obvious fact that social media including Facebook and Twitter need to improve their own understandings and policies in such issues.  When we speak of ending violence against women in all forms, we need to understand that all stakeholders must act together to bring out a fruitful result.  I am anticipating that such groups may resurface on Facebook again because Facebook or any social media in that case, does not and cannot bar any individual from coming back to create another new identity with yet another set of false information.

Let us be prepared to fight such online harassment against women in a positive way.  

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), “How we were able to remove Facebook groups victimising women through creating fake avatars: A success story

”, 26-11-2015, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/

Porn panic: how festive-dressing styles become responsible

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

Come autumn and it is the festive season every where in India.  Daily soaps are regularly interrupted by new advertisements about every usable stuff and the fashion magazines  get flooded by what a teenager should wear, how a woman should carry her saree or in what attire a man should look most ‘desirable’ to women. Nonetheless, each of the States in India have their own dressing style, but when it comes to metro style and casuals, especially for festivals, girls and boys, men and women never disappoint style makers of Bollywood and the Mumbai serials. This Durga puja was a special one for me as I got to see Kolkata in Durga Puja after a long time. The city has not changed its traditions, but digital habits of people have. Visitors to puja pandals , especially young adults visit the pandals not for seeing the different themes or idols, but for taking selfies with “Durga and her children”.  Too many flashes, ‘click’ sounds of camera phones  do make a disturbance for those who want to enjoy the Puja in its real meaning. With the changing of the time, these were bound to happen. But what worries me is the gross violation of privacy while clicking selfies, doulfies (couple-selfie) or even clicking of the general Puja  pandals.  In earlier days, capturing images in the Puja pandals was treated as ‘eve teasing’ if someone intentionally clicked images of girls and women by continuously  disturbing them, making them to look at the photographer  without getting their permission and against their will (to be photographed). Even though this had proved to be dangerous for many girls and women, their harassment would not have been as ‘large scale’ as it may be now. It is because not only the girls and women can be clicked anywhere, in any position, their images can travel to many persons, many unwanted sites and to many unwanted persons within minutes. The hard truth is, even the selfie taker girls and women may also be victimised if their selfies land in unwanted places on internet.

 In this connection, I must mention about the conference on Porn, Panic, Ban held at Delhi on 28^th and 29^th October, organised jointly by Point of View and Internet Democracy project. I was invited as a resource person and speaker to speak on indecent representation of women on internet. My lecture was largely based on my article titled “Examining the scope of IndecentRepresentation of Women (prevention) Act in the light of cyber victimization inIndia”. In this conference, I and other speakers raised our concern regarding voyeurism. Precisely, in any public festival, women and girls may be the chosen targets for such voyeurs who have mania for clicking women and girls from odd angels. These images are either uploaded in the social networking sites for personal sexual gratification, creation of ‘sex-groups’, or even revenge porn.  We do know how a couple  of months back, the images of children clicked and uploaded on Facebook had created a vicious network of people who turned these young children into ‘sex-items’ for them on Facebook . The photographs of these children were also clicked in public places. Saying this I want to emphasise on the fact that everyone, especially women and girls in the present age must be cautious about their safety not only in the physical world, but also on internet.  In my previous article titled “Online Victimization of Andaman Jarawa Tribal Women: AnAnalysis of the ‘Human Safari’ YouTube Videos (2012) and its Effects.” Which was published in British Journal of Criminology in 2014, I had shown how absence of proper laws prohibiting photography in public places enhance the possibilities of online victimisation of women more. Same opinion goes for young girls and boys as well.

The festival dressing styles for women and girls not only encourage the fashion makers to decide for the next style statements, but also encourage the perpetrators to get armed with cell phone cameras to ‘capture’ their prey for their own corrupted minds.  It may be impossible to think about curtailing private rights to capture images at Puja pandals or any festival gatherings, but this becomes a necessary need for saving women from being indecently represented on internet. Along with that, I agree with some concerned police officers who are of the view that neither men nor women or children should opt for those attire, which not only make themselves feel uncomfortable, but also may make them victims of unwanted harassment.   Plainly speaking, public places ( except where it is designated to be a bathing place), should not be considered as platforms to experiment attires or style statements which may attract unwanted harassment. It needs to be understood that while one may dress according to one’s own choice, one can not expect everyone to have same views about him/her in his/her chosen attire. While its true that perpetrators and perverts may target women and girls and even men in any attire, but still then, in my own experience I have seen that perverts do target specific people, who in their view is the 'sexiest'. True, its their problem and not ours.  
 Let me explain this with an example from my own childhood. At a wedding we got to see a famous movie star who came in attire which was the latest fashion statement at the early 90’s. He wore a see-through shirt. While he ( note that this particular person is a man and not a woman) managed to attract the attention of every young people who loved watching him on screen, there were people who were not exposed to such see through garments in real life. The popular actor did also managed to hear one such person shouting at others ‘look the man is wearing plastic sheet to show off his hairy chest and plump midriff’ . It was truly a hilarious moment for many of us youngsters who were ‘forced’ to look at the actor once again and scrutinise his body structure. But remember, the late 80’s and early 90’s did not have cell phone cameras and smart phones and hence his picture in his latest style did not become viral in the other way with the odd comment ‘pasted’ to his picture.  But this can happen now. Nonetheless, if this happens to anyone now, only the true victims would know what the pain would be like.  Social media would not take down such fake avatar with nasty comments if the victim is an adult, because such posts would obviously carry the question of First Amendment rights versus right against being victimised by indecent representation; clouds may take such images and the comments to numerous unwanted sites and it would become literally impossible for the victim to remove image of hers in her own favourite attire which may have become ‘hot favourite’ for others for sexual gratification. For this women and girls need to be more aware. No, my concern is not for making women and girls feel that they should not opt for uncomfortable dresses in the name of fashion only; my concern is for women team among the organisers. Stand up for protesting any violation of rights of women and girls and this could be done when women members in the Puja organising committees or volunteers from civil society members take active steps for spreading the awareness against voyeuristic activities. 
 With Kali Puja and Diwali approaching, the government, the police and also the puja organisers and civil society at large must decide to take such steps which may create awareness among people to prevent such sorts of victimisation of people. 

• Children, do not click unwanted photos of others, because this may violate other’s privacy. 
• Young adults, restrain from using your cellphone cameras as ‘spy-cam’, because if you are capturing somebody secretly, remember, you are not only violating other’s rights, but some one may also do the same to you and you may have to face  legal actions and harassments as well. 
• Especially to girls and women: beware while taking selfies and storing it in the clouds or sharing it with others. You may never know how your favourite selfie can become an item for adult sites and an indecent representation of yourself.

Wish you all a very happy and safe Diwali.

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), “Porn panic: how festive- dressin styles become responsible”, 06-11-2015, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/

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/

The Elonis decision: why would Indian women feel bothered?

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

The month of June opened with a ‘sweet surprise’ note for many free speech advocates when the US Supreme Court pronounced its decision in favour of Elinos, who was earlier convicted for posting violent messages in Facebook  fantasising killing of his estranged wife, who had a ‘protection order’ against Elinos.  His posts (which may no more be found in Facebook) ran like these : “There’s one way to love ya, but a thousand way to kill ya” ; “fold up your protective order and put it in your pocket. Is it thick enough to stop a bullet?”  He did not stop with his thoughts about harming his wife, he fantasised a school shooting and then targeting a female FBI agent also.  As I get to know from the text of the judgement, when Elinos’s boss came to know about it, he was fired and the concerned boss alerted the FBI as well.  May be because Elinos was targeting their own departmental staff in his ‘fantasy’, along with posting violent messages targeting schools that they started monitoring the posts made by him and subsequently he was indicted  under 18 USC S.875(c) (it says “Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both”) .After the Supreme Court judgement was published in the internet, concerned stakeholders published their own thoughts and opinions about the same.  While some felt that the judgement re-established the principles of free speech in regard to internet, some expressed concern regarding safety of women especially in domestic abuse cases.  Precisely, the court felt that the posts of Elonis were his own thoughts and even though the posts apparently seemed like threat messages to his wife or that the messages exposed his desire for a school shoot or harming a female FBI agent, the government failed to prove that the speaker’s (Elonis) ‘subjective intent’ was to execute the threats in real life. As Soraya Chemali and Mary Ann Frank in their writeup on the issue pointed out, “While the court did not go so far as to hold that a true threat turns on what the speaker intended to accomplish, the ruling suggests that the determination of what constitutes threat rests with the speaker and not his audience.”( 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).

My attention is attracted to this particular judgement because Elonis was actually targeting women ( his wife and the female FBI agent) and children ( consider his post regarding school shoot out).  In its detailed judgement, it may be seen that the court was convinced by the defence of Elonis whereby he stated that he was actually posting those messages in the style of rap lyrics; that his posts were not direct threats that were to be executed like what happened for many other cold blooded murders or attacks including that of the blogger Abhijit Roy, who was supposedly sent warning messages by radical extremists who finally killed him in Bangladesh.  This judgement reminded me of our own Shreya Singhal vs. Union of India which struck down the controversial 66A. The US Supreme court  did not strike down any controversial laws, but it could motivate some stakeholders to think about the effect of laws, execution of the same and confusion among the legal fraternity regarding online abuse, especially targeting women. When the Indian Supreme court struck down 66A, while majority of the internet users, lawyers and supporters of free speech were happy, there were some including myself who expressed their concern . Is the judiciary paving a way for ‘abusers’ to escape the prosecution?  After the Shreya Singhal judgement was passed, many police officers told me that there would be a steep rise in online abuse now and we have to accept that these are but normal exercise of free speech. Nonetheless, women would continue to be the prime targets followed by transgender people, children and men. Surprisingly I was contacted by many journalists who expressed their anguish about lack of focussed laws on preventing online attack in the forms of bullying or trolling or threatening speech against women, celebrities, writers, journalists and also children. Our courts are oftener than not influenced by judgements of foreign courts; 66A judgement was no exception since the concept of free speech is being broadened basing on the understandings of the US and UK courts. When it comes to posting violent messages as Elonis did, in India, the women ( who may be targeted in the same fashion as the estranged wife of Elonis) would either leave the social networking sites, or may feel  extremely  traumatised  to speak about the issue, or may take up irrational modes like hiring hackers to remove those particular posts ( see Halder, D., & Jaishankar, K. (2015). Irrational Coping Theory and Positive Criminology: A Frame Work to Protect Victims of Cyber Crime. In N. Ronel and D. Segev (Eds.), Positive Criminology (pp. 276 -291). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-74856-8). Some women victims may  gather enough courage to report the matter to the police, but in my experience I have seen few successful endings in such cases.  The reason is simple; many police officers may think in the similar lines as the US Supreme Court  have thought “...........determination of what constitutes threat rests with the speaker and not his audience”. The case ends then and there when the victims are told to withdraw from social media or change the phone number. Unfortunately we still do not have ‘protective order’ types of orders for online abuse  especially when it comes to interpersonal attacks.  The police may cease the devices, destroy the SIM cards and the courts may pronounce jail term or bail. But in practice, nothing actually works. Unless the social media stops the accused from using his account, he may continue to misuse it by posting threatening messages and enjoy sadistically the fearful pleas, warnings or even gradual detoriation of the psychological health of the victim. If finally the social media or his other service provider blocks him, he may come back again with a new identity to continue the harassment.

While we boast of our laws for dealing with abuse and harassment of women, all is not always well. The courts need to see the practical points while acquitting posters of violent messages or hate messages.  Sometimes violent messages may really have the “road maps” for more actual violence even if the poster convinces the police as well the courts that he did not intend to harm actually.  From my experience I have seen how such messages may lead to graver misdeeds like creation of “fake avatars” ( I coined the term Fake Avatar which is defined as “a false representation of the victim which is created by the perpetrator through digital technology with or without the visual images of the victim and which carry verbal information about the victim which may or may not be fully true and it is created and floated in the internet to intentionally malign the character of the victim and to mislead the viewers about the victim’s original identity.”  see Halder Debarati,(2013) p. 197 “Examining the scope of Indecent Representation of Women (Prevention) Act, 1986 in the light of cyber victimisation of women in India” National law school journal, Vol 11,2013, 188-218)), or even extortion or stalking or online gang-attack.   It is high time that the law makers, police and the courts take note of the situation especially when it comes to digital safety of 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), “The Elonis decision: why would Indian women feel bothered?

”6^th June, 2015, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/