Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud on Friday said dissemination of fake news drowns out true information, replacing the character of discourse from truth-seeking to the loudest voice.
At the 14th Justice VM Tarkunde Memorial Lecture on “Upholding Civil Liberties in the Digital Age: Privacy, Surveillance, and Free Speech”, he said: “A cursory glance at the newspaper every day will bring to the fore instances of communal and vigilante violence fueled by fake rumours and targeted disinformation campaigns. Across the globe — be it Libya, the Philippines, Germany, or the US — elections and civil society have been tarnished by the proliferation of fake news.”
Remembering Justice Tarkunde, former Bombay HC judge and founder of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, as a “legal luminary”, the CJI spoke about having briefed him on several cases when they both were lawyers. “In one such case, Sodan Singh v. New Delhi Municipal Committee, which dealt with the right of pavement hawkers to carry on their occupation, he (Tarkunde) told me you must always look at the law’s purpose in such cases,” the CJI said. Hailing Justice Tarkunde’s courage, Justice Chandrachud recalled the many preventive-detention cases he took as a lawyer, free of charge, during the Emergency, including that of The Indian Express journalist Kuldip Nayyar’s, who was detained under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, 1971.
Recalling Justice Tarkunde’s death in 2004 when the digital age was in a relatively “nascent stage”, Justice Chandrachud went on to highlight the presence of emerging initiatives and civil society groups in today’s day and age that aim to tackle online censorship, Internet shutdowns and mass surveillance. “They represent a contemporary form of protest and activism which is rooted in Justice Tarkunde’s tradition of safeguarding citizens’ liberties. In many ways, the ‘digital liberties activism’ of today’s Internet age is a way of upholding the pre-existing traditions of civil liberties activism,” he said.
Khadija KhanKhadija Khan is a correspondent with The Indian Express, Delhi. She wr… read more