NEW DELHI: Social media companies complied with nearly three-fourths of the requests received from Indian law enforcement agencies over the past one-and-a-half years for blocking content and web pages deemed as unlawful under section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Minister of state for home Hansraj Gangaram Ahir , in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, disclosed that of the 2,245 requests conveyed to companies including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for blocking of objectionable URLs, 1,662 were complied with.

As per compliance data for 2017 and 2018 (till June) put out by Ahir, Facebook had the best record, having complied with nearly 89% of the requests received for blocking of objectionable content/URLs under the IT Act . YouTube accepted 83.5% of the recommendations received from the law enforcement agencies. Instagram and Twitter, however, were less cooperative on such requests, having blocked only 44% and 56% of the requested URLs respectively.

Ahir told the Lok Sabha that ‘police’ and ‘public order’ being ‘state’ subjects as per the Constitution, the states were responsible for prevention, detection and investigation of cyber crimes through their law enforcement machinery under the relevant sections of IPC and IT Act.

“Law enforcement agencies monitor the web and social media and take appropriate action for blocking of such unlawful content under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Committee constituted under Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009 periodically monitors the compliance of the directions issued under the provisions of Information Technology Act, 2000,” he informed the House.

The minister said that while recommendations to block unlawful content and URLs were made periodically by the law enforcement agencies concerned, the Centre was also holding meetings from time to time with the intermediaries to strengthen the cooperation framework to ensure better compliance.

It was due to these efforts that Facebook blocked 956 objectionable URLs as against 1,076 requested, YouTube 152 against 182 requested, Twitter 409 as compared to 728 requested, Instagram 66 of the 150 requested, while others complied with 79 of the 109 recommendations made.

