Net authority sought to monitor sexual abuse content on the web

Two cyber security and safety experts, who are working with the Centre and a few state governments, have called upon the Centre to set up and establish an Internet Authority of India on the lines of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to monitor the Web for content relating to sexual abuse and threat to women and children.

Addressing a press conference in the City on Friday, Shubhamangala Sunil, CEO, Global Cyber Security Response Team, and Dr Amar Prasad Reddy, Additional Director General of National Cyber Safety and Security Standards, called for establishing the Internet Authority of India at the earliest to tackle cyber crime, particularly in the sexual domain.

Reddy said his and Sunil’s organisation outrightly rejected a finding published recently in most newspapers that Indian women were the highest consumers of pornography. “We entirely reject this study and the claim it has made, which is false. We have written a letter of protest against the website. We also don’t trust the statistics the website pornhub.com has put out. We want the website to pull out its content,” Sunil and Reddy said, adding that in India not many, including youngsters knew that uploading porn videos is a crime.

The two experts are developing an Internet monitoring framework to monitor the Internet as far as sexual abuse online is concerned.

“We are working with 18 state governments on this. We tried to get the Karnataka government onboard, but so far there has been no response. We want a monitoring cell at the central and state level. Much of the sex videos are coming into India from Pakistan and Bangladesh. So, working with the government is very crucial,” Sunil and Reddy said.