Government's Power Not Tweet-Specific, Extends To Blocking Accounts: Karnataka High Court

The central government's power to block content under the Information Technology Rules is not tweet-specific and can be extended to the entirety of an account, the Karnataka High Court said, in a plea by Twitter Inc. against orders to block 39 accounts.

According to the court, a restricted interpretation of Information Technology (Procedures and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009, may make the provision “otiose” or obsolete. It may encourage a “better luck next time” approach among the account holders, it said.

The Karnataka High Court on Friday had dismissed a petition moved by Twitter against a government order to take down several Twitter accounts under the IT Rules. The court had further imposed a fine of Rs 50 lakh on the microblogging site.

According to the court, the intent of the statute is not just penal and curative but also preventive. "To put it metaphorically, a surgeon does not wait till gangrene is developed. A stitch in time saves nine,” the court said.

Twitter had argued that the central government failed to give proper notice to the account holders before blocking the accounts in violation of the Website Blocking Rules, which mandate a 48-hour notice before blocking tweets or accounts. This was also in violation of the account holder's fundamental right to speech and expression, the social media platform argued.

However, a notice under the IT Rules is not mandatory, the court said. Even if it is, it does not give Twitter—an intermediary—the right to challenge it. As none of the account holders have come forward to exercise their rights, nor have they authorised Twitter to launch a legal battle on their behalf, Twitter by itself has no right to approach the court for the violation, the high court held.

It was alleged by Twitter that the central government did not even make reasonable efforts to identify the account holder, which is in violation of the due diligence measures provided under the statute.

On this point, the court held that it is not necessary to even discern the identity of account holders, as the statute gives the government the option to either identify the account holder or the intermediary, which in this case is Twitter.

The court further rejected Twitter's arguments that the measure was not proportional. A foreign entity that doesn't have a fundamental right to speech under the Indian Constitution cannot claim such protection, it said.

Twitter's argument that the central government should have resorted to tweet-level blocking first before moving to block accounts was rejected by the court on grounds of being impractical. According to the high court, distinguishing between malicious and innocuous tweets is difficult because account creators may mix provocative and innocuous tweets.

The court also took into consideration Twitter's own actions in the past, such as blocking the account of Donald J Trump, to conclude that there is nothing unusual about blocking accounts as an extreme measure.