J&K police look for cyber volunteers to identify and report 'anti-national' posts

Many social media users described the development as the rise of a new 'Ikhwan' — a dreaded, pro-government counter-insurgency militia

A snow-covered road in Srinagar.: PTI photo

Muzaffar Raina   |   TT   |   Srinagar   |    08.02.21  : Jammu and Kashmir police are looking for cyber volunteers who will identify and report “anti-national” posts, raising fears of online vigilantes intruding on privacy and targeting people they bear grudges against.

Many social media users described the development as the rise of a new “Ikhwan” — a dreaded, pro-government counter-insurgency militia that existed in the early years of the militancy and was accused of massive crimes in the Valley.

A police statement on Wednesday asked people to register as “cyber crime volunteers” under the “framework of ministry of home affairs programme — Cyber Crime Volunteer Framework”.

High court lawyer Altaf Khan said the scheme was being implemented across India but Jammu and Kashmir police seemed to have taken the lead in volunteer-hunting.

“You will now be watched by fellow citizens,” he said, adding that the initiative was open to abuse by the cyber volunteers to settle personal scores.

The police statement said citizens could register in any of three categories of cyber volunteers: cyber volunteer unlawful content flagger, cyber awareness promoter, or cyber expert.

People will be “required to register as volunteer through a dedicated section, ‘Cyber Volunteers’, on (the) National Cybercrime Reporting Portal”, the statement said.

The content flaggers will identify and report online content suspected to be illegal, such as those relating to “anti-national” activities, terrorism, radicalisation and crimes like child pornography or rape.

Anybody can be a content flagger since “no prior verification (KYC) is required”. However, for the two other categories, the state or Union Territory concerned will carry out verification.

The cyber awareness promoters will educate people – especially “vulnerable groups like women, children, and elderly and rural population” -- on cyber crimes. The cyber experts will deal with specific domains of cyber crime such as forensics, network forensics, malware analysis, memory analysis and cryptography.

Kashmir’s cyber police chief, Tahir Ashraf, did not take calls from The Telegraph but later said in a text message that he had “not started any such recruitment”, appearing to imply the statement was not issued by his office.

Ashraf did not respond to questions about the possible misuse of the programme by the volunteers.

“It (the initiative) will increase intrusion in your privacy and you do not know what the mechanism to control it is,” Khan, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court lawyer, told this newspaper.

“People may have personal grievances against each other, and they (the volunteers) can misuse it (the scheme). (Nobody knows) what the mechanism to find out the truth or falsity of such reports is.”

Khan said the initiative was more dangerous than Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which prescribed up to three-year jail terms for people posting “objectionable” material online and was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 2015.

“(Under that law) any government agency had the power to report (the alleged crime) but here you are being watched by everybody,” Khan said.

“If somebody does not like your comment, he will report it and you will be scared to write anything on your wall.”

The people of Jammu and Kashmir have faced unprecedented cyber curbs since the abrogation of key Article 370 provisions in August 2019. The Internet had initially been suspended for months, and a ban on high-speed 4G Internet was lifted only last Friday evening.

The cyber police have been summoning people for posts criticising the government or the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood and special status.

Two Valley journalists were booked under the anti-terror law UAPA on the charge of posting “anti-national” content last year. Many accounts have been suspended by Twitter on the central government’s request.

Two Valley-based news portals were booked in late January for alleged public mischief after the army complained about reports that accused it of forcing a private school in Shopian to hoist the Tricolour on Republic Day.

According to the website of the Union home ministry’s National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, the latest programme is open to individuals “willing to volunteer in any other area that can help in fighting cybercrime”.

The applications will be received by the regional nodal offices in the states, and in Jammu and Kashmir by the crime branch inspector-general of police who will “contact the applicants on an as-needed basis”.