So far. The San Francisco-based company filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Karnataka, a state in southwestern India, on Tuesday, according to a filing reviewed online by CNN Business. Twitter declined to comment on the case. However, a source familiar with the filing said the company had decided to challenge some of the government’s orders as they “demonstrate excessive use of powers and are disproportionate”. In the past, authorities have asked Twitter to remove posts critical of the Modi government, including its handling of the country’s brutal second wave of the coronavirus pandemic last spring. “Authorities target people for content posted online and routinely bully web platforms and social media services into complying with censorship,” said Raman Jit Singh Chima, senior international advisor and director of Asia Pacific policy at digital rights group Access Now. Chima and other free speech advocates have accused the government of trying to censor journalists, protest groups and opposition lawmakers with the blocking orders, which are rarely made public. “Today, Twitter is standing up for the public and doing what government should be doing: protecting our rights,” he added. India’s technology ministry threatened Twitter last month with “severe consequences,” including criminal proceedings against its executives, if the company did not comply with the agency’s orders to remove certain tweets and block accounts, the source said. While the company has currently blocked access to the content in India, it is seeking judicial review of some of the orders. The company believes they violate the country’s technology laws and threaten free speech, according to the source. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology did not respond to a request for comment. However, India’s junior IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said in a tweet on Tuesday that foreign internet platforms “have [a] right to court and judicial review,” in India, without citing Twitter. He added that all platforms operating in the country “have [an] unquestionable obligation to comply with our laws and rules.”
High stakes showdown
The lawsuit by Twitter is the latest row in an increasingly contentious relationship between Silicon Valley tech companies and one of their biggest markets. India’s ruling party has stepped up its crackdown on social media and messaging apps since last year. U.S. technology companies repeatedly raised fears last year that the country’s technology rules could erode privacy, lead to mass surveillance and hurt businesses in the world’s fastest-growing digital market. India says it is trying to maintain national security. The rules, issued in February 2021, include requirements for tech companies to set up dedicated compliance officers in India. There are also requirements that services remove some content, including posts that feature “full or partial nudity.” In addition, the technology platforms will have to identify the “original creator” of the messages if requested by the authorities. That demand forced WhatsApp – owned, like Facebook ( FB ), by Meta – to file a legal complaint against the government in May last year. WhatsApp said the requirement would break the platform’s “end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermine people’s right to privacy.” The case is pending, a company spokesperson told CNN Business on Wednesday. Twitter previously clashed with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology early last year over accounts the agency wanted removed during a series of protests by farmers. Twitter complied with some of the requests, but declined to take action against the accounts of journalists, activists or politicians. Twitter also raised concerns about IT rules last year and said it plans to “advocate for changes to elements of these regulations that impede free, open public debate.” In its lawsuit this week, Twitter did not challenge India’s technology law, but said the government’s blocking orders are “disproportionate in several cases,” according to the source. India’s free speech activists welcomed the move on Tuesday. Many of them said last year they felt frustrated by Twitter’s inability to take a firm stand against the government. However, some believe the company could have gone further. “They have narrowly challenged the orders of the Indian government in these particular cases, rather than challenging the lack of accountability of the Indian government that the IT Act allows,” said Nikhil Pahwa, founder of Delhi-based technology website MediaNama. “Twitter had an opportunity to do a lot more and they didn’t try to make a meaningful, meaningful change,” he added. — Swati Gupta and Esha Mitra contributed to this report.
