Cyber Crime Volunteers Program
GS PAPER III: Challenges to internal security through communication networks, role of media and social networking sites in internal security challenges, basics of cyber security; money-laundering and its prevention.
Context: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has said it does not maintain a centralised list of volunteers enrolled under the cybercrime volunteer programme since police is a “State subject” under the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution.
Cyber Crime Volunteers Program
- The MHA, through its cybercrime grievance portal, cybercrime.gov.in, aims to raise a group of “cybercrime volunteers” to flag “unlawful content” on the Internet.
- The volunteer programme is supposed to act as a facilitative tool between ordinary citizens and the government for the prevention of cybercrime.
- Any citizen can register himself/herself under one of three categories: ‘Cyber Volunteer Unlawful Content Flagger’, ‘Cyber Awareness Promoter’, and ‘Cyber Expert’.
- Post-registration, the individual can directly report “unlawful content” being circulated over the Internet, which presumably includes social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, among others.
- The Cyber Crime Volunteer Framework has been rolled out as a part of cyber hygiene promotion to bring together citizens to contribute in the fight against cybercrime in the country and assist State/UT LEAs in their endeavour to curb cybercrimes.
- The volunteers are registered, and their services utilised, by the respective State/UT LEAs as per their requirement.
- Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) has been established under Ministry of Home affairs (MHA) to act as a nodal point at National level in the fight against cybercrime.
- It aims to provide a platform to deal with cybercrimes in a coordinated and comprehensive manner.
- One of the important objectives of I4C is to create ecosystem that brings together academia, industry, public and government in prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of cybercrimes.
- I4C has envisaged the Cyber Crime Volunteers Program to bring together citizens with passion to serve the nation on a single platform and contribute in fight against cybercrime in the country.
- Good Samaritans are welcome to register as Cyber Crime Volunteers in the role of Unlawful Content Flaggers for facilitating law enforcement agencies in identifying, reporting and removal of illegal / unlawful online content.
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