What Happened to CRAC?
The constitution of the New Expert Committee to make an "In-depth review" of
ITA-2000 raises an important issue of what happened to the Cyber Regulations
Advisory Committee (CRAC).
In case an "In depth Review" is really intended, then there is a possibility of
major changes in the Act. In this context, the constitution of the Committee
with the kind of representation that it envisages is likely to be considered
Ultra-Vires the Act.
According to Section 88 of the ITA-2000, it is mandatory for the Government to
take the advise of the CRAC which has representations from various stake holders
including the industry for any major revisions to be made to the Act.
It is to be noted that CRAC had a representation from the Home Ministry and Law
Ministry as well as the States, Law Enforcement and the Controller of Certifying
Authorities. These bodies are now not represented in the committee.
Though the professionals in the group may do a good work, the committee is in
the danger of being considered as a "Lobby of Industrial Interests"
and its recommendations may come in for needless opposition when the CRAC sits
in review of the suggestions.
It may be recalled that the initial legislation for Cyber Laws were initiated
under the banner of E-Commerce Act 1998 drafted by the Commerce Ministry of the
GOI. However, when the Ministry of Information Technology took over, many of the
good provisions of the earlier draft were modified. Subsequently when the draft
of the Ministry of Information Technology was scrutinized by the Law Ministry,
further changes were made. It was due to such tinkering by multiple agencies at
different times of development that ITA-2000 got corrupted and was some times
ridiculed. This sequential review of the draft is likely to create ego problems
that reflect in unwarranted changes and corruption of the draft. It is better
from the point of view of acceptability for all stake holders to sit together
and have their say before the draft is finalized.
It is hoped that the Expert Committee does not suffer the same fate as the Draft
of E-Commerce Act 1998 suffered before it became ITA-2000.
During the last
year or so, the Ministry had initiated several exercises on the revision of
ITA-2000 and it would be interesting to see how this industry led committee
would respond to the task.
It is also interesting that the present committee does not include Mr
T.K.Vishwanathan one of the architects of the original Act and other specialists
who were earlier involved in the process. Perhaps this is done deliberately to
avoid any hangover of the earlier draft and we may therefore expect an attempt
at a wholesale review of the Act.
However the time of 6 weeks given for the committee is too short for a major
review given the fact that most of the committee members except Mr Chakravarthy
may not be fully conversant with the multi dimensional problems that may
surface. Under the circumstance, if an in-depth review could lead to tinkering
with the already confused legislation making it even more contradictory.
On the other hand the short time span given may lead to only some peripheral
touches just to protect E-Commerce sites such as Bazee.com. Rediff.com, Sify.com
etc from being held responsible for the Cyber Crimes. This could therefore turn
out to be a very "Portal Friendly Legislation".
We shall deliberate on some of the changes that could come about in our next
article..A
Portal Friendly Legislation in the Offing?
Naavi
January 8, 2005
Related Articles:
Please refer to List of Articles for the
past coverage on the subject at Naavi.org
Latest Version
of ITA-2000 is Available here:
