Cyber World-Sword Against Women [PDF]

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CYBER WORLD: SWORD AGAINST WOMEN -SRISHTI PUNJ (BA-LLB) ABSTRACT- Access to internet has become the necessity for economic well being and is now viewed as human fundamental right. Within a decade technology had evolved a lot especially during this COVID outbreak. Today internet is new opium of masses. Ancient sacred scripts remind me of the time when we used to worship women as goddess but it seems like obscure now days. Women are not saved on roads but when it comes to cyberspace the situation is more worsened. This blog will provide you with analysis and review on the interest of women in cyberspace. Women are getting kidnapped at every 44 minutes, raped at every 47 minutes and 17 dowry deaths every day. According to United Nations, 73% of women and girls exposed to some form of online violence firmly known as cyber disruptions. A sea change in digital world has been brought through covid19. But the question is that whether digitalization has also brought public safe environment? Our interactions with women from various fields from home makers to lawyers, engineers to historians have all unequivocally said they have been disappointed by reporting abuse to social media platform. According to data of national commission for women, 419 genuine complaints of cyber abuse from march 25 till April 25, 2020 out of which 396 were serious in nature. According to National Crime Record Bureau, from 2012 – 2018 90,000 cyber crime cases reported.

1.INTRODUCTION Digital abuse is the use of technology and internet to bully, harass, stalks, etc. it is an online way of abusing and affecting the victim mentally and emotionally. Cybercrime word in not defined in Information Technology Act, 2000 so we can infer that cybercrimes are “Offences that are committed against individuals or groups of individuals with a criminal motive to intentionally harm the reputation of the victim or cause physical or mental harm, or loss, to the victim directly or indirectly, using modern telecommunication networks such as Internet (Chat rooms, emails, notice boards and groups) and mobile phones (SMS/MMS).”1 First recorded cyber crime case took place in 1820.Cybercrime is prevalent in our society but yet not recognized as a heinous 1

Jonathan clough, Principles of Cybercrime 12( cambridge publication , 2ndedn 1998)

crime. Maybe the reason is that women are not aware and we have dead laws for that. Many a times, women are not even aware of the laws that could protect their rights. Most of the cybercrimes cases go unreported. NCRB data provide us with the information that there are total 71 crore internet users out of which 25 crore are women. 80% of people are falling prey for cyber crime and 63% people don’t know where to lodge a complaint for. To have a better understanding let us go through the different forms of cybercrime.

2.TYPES OF CYBERCRIME AGAINST WOMEN: 

Harassment via e-mail: victims are targeted through black mailing, threatening, bullying through e-mails.

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Cyber stalking: It is an online threat where persons on internet are targeted by posting messages and threatening through chat rooms. Despite under sec 354D of IPC stalking is criminal offence but it is necessary to increase the punishment to deter this crime.

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Cyber pornography: it is basically the use of internet to print or publish pornographic photos on magazines or websites without the knowledge of that person. Almost 50% of websites contains pornographic material .IT Act, 2000 talks about cyber pornography.

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Cyber defamation: when someone publishes defamatory statement through social networking sites like Google, facebook, twitter and other social sites. Although Twitter provides safe place for free expression for minority class including women but everyday women on twitter face a barrage of abuse and attacks to rape and death threats merely because they have right to speech. In 2012, multiple Twitter users threatened Indian activist Meena Kandasamy after she discussed a beef-eating festival in Hyderabad using her personal Twitter account and was threatened with acid attacks and televised gang rape. When it comes to facebook we have witnessed high profile case that questions the dignity of women. Situation was so worsen that in 2017 in US, 15 year old Chicago girl whose rape was streamed online using the face book live function. Journalist Barkha Dutt has been called India’s most trolled woman who was routinely harassed for her online comments, escalated on Twitter and Facebook in December 2015 after she described being sexually abused as a child in her book This Unquiet Land. And in another case the Kerala Cyber Crime Cell has arrested a local You Tuber, for making sexually

explicit comments against women in a 20-minute video titled ‘Why feminists in India and Kerala do not wear clothes.’2 

Morphing: Editing of the original photo by unauthorized user or fake identity and such pictures are reposted or uploaded on different platforms. Section 67 of IT Act,2000 makes it a criminal offence

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Video calls through video conferencing apps: Since the outbreak of COVID, video conferencing apps have become more prevalent in profession but also platform for harassment of women. Sometimes during meetings women are ordered to switch on their videos and the manager or the boss starts with obscene things on video call and chat. Zoom is the common platform for work. In the beginning of the year around 1700 new domains were registered and 4% found certain suspicious characteristics with unauthorized use. On the other hand India becomes the second highest usage of Cisco’s virtual meeting app after US. In one the latest case, we came across the situation where the professor had started talking obscenely in video calls and messages with the student. 3 In another instance, an employee takes screenshots of his female colleague and intoxicated manager video calls female at late night and make indecent remarks. This virtual workplace has blurred the formal and informal lines of profession. Guidelines should be provided for home workplace harassment.

3. INDIAN LEGISLATION ON CYBER CRIME Indian Parliament has passed the first called as the Information Technology Act, 2000 which is based on the Model Law on Electronic Commerce on January 30, 1997 which is earlier adopted by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). The provisions relating to cybercrimes are given under Chapter XI of this Act .This Act provide us with strict and high punishments i.e. imprisonment upto lifetime , fines upto Rs 10 lakhs and compensation upto 5 crores. but some prevalent issues regarding women are still untouched in it. Certain 2

https://theprint.in/india/kerala-cyber-cell-arrests-youtuber-who-made-vulgar-remarks-about-feminists-in-hisvideo/512645/ 3 https://www.ampinitynews.com/professor-continued-indecent-chat-on-video-call-the-woman-raised-objectionsthreatened-to-reduce-the-number/71025/

provisions of the “Indecent Representation of Women Act,1980 ”specifically sec 3and sec 4 deals with Women who usually face sexual remarks or statements which are defamatory and hampers their reputation in both online and offline space. Certain provisions of Indian Penal Code, 1860 deals with cyber stalking, cyber defamation, email spoofing, etc but IPC and the IT act do not cover all the cyber offences. In the year 2017, nearly every fifth cyber crime was committed against women. We have Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) Act, 2013 which provide protection for virtual work place. It clearly defines sexual harassment as inappropriate physical as well as gestural and verbal behavior. 

4. CONCLUSION When we revolve around the sphere of cybercrime, cyber security has immense role to play. Cyber security is the guidelines and intended actions against cybercrime. Legislation lacks in making and implementing guidelines and laws for cyber security while there are some national wide and worldwide organizations working for it. Cyber security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has started with “STOP.THINK.CONNECT” Campaign which is a national public awareness campaign that deals with cyber threats. Maharashtra is the first state which has a cyber police station in each district. Laws cannot be implemented efficiently until the women themselves come out and report the crimes. Lockdown has post a lot of challenges for working women and online sexual harassment added fuel to the fire. As a result we have no guidelines on remote working women getting unwarranted video calls at odd hours and indecent comments on social media which may even leads to their marriage breakdown. So we need efficient laws that could deal with fast growing digitalization and can provide save environment for women. Justice Misra once said, "There is a need to come up with a code, a mechanism to deal with cyber crime. Through a computer a man can create an artificial system which can have much more knowledge than what human mind can contain. Knowledge is powerful and knowledge can be dangerous."

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