'Digital India Act': New Delhi's proposed plan to ensure online safety

The Indian government has been aggressively pushing the Digital India framework and forging ahead with the campaign to even the most remote part of the nation.

The government aims to improve online infrastructure across the nation and, with better internet connectivity, the government and other services will be made available efficiently.

But the spread of the internet comes with online security and cybercrimes, and in order to tackle such threats, there's a need to establish measures and regulations.

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Hence, India is planning to enforce Digital India Act (currently a draft), which will seek to ensure that the internet in India is open, free from user harm and criminality. It will also look after establishing the institutional mechanism of accountability.

What is Digital India Act (DIA)?

DIA has been introduced to replace the Information Technology Act, which came into being in October 2000.

The government said that the Digital India Act, of 2023 is a future-ready legislation that aims to provide a strong legal framework to support India's tech goals.

A statement published by PIB read, "It constitutes a significant part of the Global Standard Cyber laws being formulated by the Narendra Modi Government for catalysing India's digital economy."

The statement also added that Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, the National Data Governance Framework policy, the recent amendments to the IT Rules, and CERT-In guidelines are important elements of this legal framework.

Today, the nation is the world's largest "digitally connected democracy" with 830 million internet users.

The government argues that the internet is mostly managed under the 23-year-old IT Act, which lacks provisions on user rights, trust, and safety, among other issues, and is ill-equipped to deal with emerging, sophisticated forms of cybercrime such as doxxing, cyberstalking, and online trolling, among others.

Technology has pros and cons

From the internet to mobile phones to artificial intelligence (AI), several waves in information technology have come with immense benefits for humankind. But there have been associated issues as well.

For example, many hail ChatGPT, and other tools like it, as the "next big thing". ChatGPT is an AI-powered language model, which is capable of generating human-like text based on context and past conversations. It is developed by OpenAI.

Its usage spread like a virus across the world, threatening jobs, and more. But the tool has also been condemned by experts. Recently, US regulators have asked OpenAI how it's addressing the potential for ChatGPT to generate false and misleading statements about real people.

AI-powered tech can help with efficiency and productivity gains, improved speed of business, and more, but there's also a need to establish control over the tech o keep it in check.

The Washington Post reported that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent a letter to OpenAI this week requesting specific information about how the company addresses the potential risk for ChatGPT "to generate statements about real individuals that are false, misleading, disparaging, or harmful."

(With inputs from agencies)

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