In its first comprehensive amendment nine years after it was first enacted, the Act proposes to bring "cyber terrorism", "identity theft" and "violation of privacy" into the domain of cyber crime. Critics of the Bill, which is awaiting Presidential assent, say it enables the government to snoop into citizens’ computers while investigating "any offence". The bill has, however, broken new ground by identifying several new offences and making them punishable.
Section 67 of the existing act deals with "publishing obscene information in electronic form". It is a generally worded section that does not specifically define "pornography" or make it an offence, and does not mention "child pornography" at all. But in its amended avatar, Section 67B proposes specifically to punish involvement in sexually explicit online or electronic content that depicts children. It will also be an offence to "cultivate, entice or induce children to online relationship with other children for a sexual act."
Both experts noted that an offence of "cyber terrorism" punishable with life imprisonment, for instance, is a vital new addition, and that its definition is exhaustive.
Legal experts note that while the amendments don’t make it illegal to view adult porn, they do make watching child porn an offence (the law would apply to "whoever creates text or digital images, collects, seeks, browses, downloads" child porn). The fear is that the section would kick in even if sites were opened accidentally, because a computer may store information about such a site being accessed.
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