Public Safety and Public Emergency Definition

Subject – Governance

Context – ‘No clear public safety, emergency definition: Net ban being used for routine policing’

Concept –

Public safety and public emergency, often used by state and Central governments to justify the suspension of telecom and internet services in an area, are not defined under Section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act.
It is, therefore, left to the “appropriate authority to form an opinion” on whether an event threatens public safety and emergency, and thereby ban internet in the area.
As per a research by UK-based privacy and security research firm Top10VPN, India suffered the largest economic impact in the world in 2020 due to internet shutdowns, adding up to 8,927 hours and $2.8 billion losses.
- Of the 21 countries that had resorted to some form of telecom or internet shutdown in 2020, the economic impact in India during that year was more than double the combined cost for the next 20 countries in the list.