HC seeks suggestions from Facebook, Google to protect children

NEW DELHI: "Worried" that children can be exploited through social networking sites, Delhi High Court today asked Facebook and Google to submit within four weeks suggestions on safety measures for online usage of such sites by minors in India.

A bench of justices B D Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru voiced concern about Indian children entering into agreement with Facebook and other social networking sites and then being lured knowingly and unknowing into illegality by adults.

"What we are worried about is children who have been part of the social network and some adults misleading them and taking advantage. We are also concern about the use of their data by the adults for their advantage," it said.

"The counsel for Facebook Inc and Google Inc will file suggestions regarding the online media sited used by the minors in India and how their rights were protected within four weeks," the bench said.

The court's direction came after counsel for Facebook Inc submitted that the site operated under the US law Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) as per which a child below 13 is not allowed to open an account.

To this, the bench said in the US the rights of the children are protected by COPPA but what about the children in India.

"What will the Facebook do if a child is exploited online? Like American children, how do you protect the rights of Indian children," the court asked and fixed July 16 as the next date of hearing the matter.

The bench's direction came while hearing the plea of former BJP ideologue K N Govindacharya seeking recovery of taxes from the websites on their income from operations in India.

The court also expressed unhappiness over the Centre's argument that one has to enter into an agreement with the site while opening an account which is not a contract but agreement to the terms and conditions. The government counsel also submitted that there is no mechanism to verify the identity and age of a child from online account.
Earlier, the court had asked the government to respond to a plea questioning how children below the age of 18 years are allowed to open account on social networking sites including Facebook, even though Indian laws do not permit it.

Govindacharya, at present a patron of 'Rashtriya Swabhimaan Aandolan, has in a public interest litigation (PIL) filed through counsel Virag Gupta also alleged that children below 18 are getting into an agreement with the social networking sites to open account which is against the Indian Majority Act, the Indian Contract Act and also the Information and Technology Act.

Due to non-verification of users, more than eight crore of Facebook users across the world were found to be "fake", which the website admitted before the US authority, the plea said. The Government of India is not taking any action against the foreign companies which have their Indian operations, the plea alleged.

The petition also sought a direction to ensure safety of the data of 50 million Indian users, which was transferred "to the US and is being used for commercial gains in violation of the right to privacy."

It contended that a writ of Mandamus should be issued to "ensure verification of all existing users and future new members of social networking websites with instructions not to do agreements with children below 18 years". The petitioner also sought directions to the Centre and the two websites to "ensure proper accounting compliances as per RBI guidelines".

"Facebook's gross revenue for previous year was USD 37 billion approximately but they are not paying due taxes to the Indian government," the petition claimed.