Poonam Sharma 🇮🇳

Statement : Meta told the Home Ministry it acted against 61,000 posts in the fortnight after Chalo Sansad. IFF calls for the record to be made public. New Delhi, 13 November 2026 Meta has told the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), the cybercrime arm of the Ministry of Home Affairs, that it acted on more than 61,000 Facebook and Instagram posts it classified as violent and inciteful between 25 July and 7 August 2026, @ThePrintIndia reported on 12 November. That is about three posts a minute for 14 days. The period begins on the day the Education Minister resigned and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) ended its protest at Jantar Mantar, five days after police used tear gas and a lathi charge against its Chalo Sansad march. The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) condemns the absence of any public account of this action. Meta disclosed the figure to the Home Ministry at a meeting on 21 August, and it became public only because the minutes were filed in the Supreme Court's suo motu proceedings on digital arrest scams.. In IFF's assessment, the minutes record direct pressure from the Ministry of Home Affairs on the content Meta carries. As per the report in The Print a meeting was chaired by Rajesh Kumar, I4C's chief executive, and followed reviews by the Union Home Secretary, a parliamentary committee and a court-monitored committee on digital arrests. Its scope was wider than financial fraud. According to ThePrint, I4C sought an in-person briefing on "how the algorithm amplifies or suppresses specific content and viral accounts", an analysis of bot networks across prominent handles, and Meta's draft guidelines on deepfakes and re-uploaded content for review. The minutes, as reported, do not state what the 61,000 posts concerned. It is not known which agency, if any, flagged them, or which law or company rule Meta applied. I4C itself did not accept aggregate figures when Meta cited 70 lakh pieces of content removed, it asked for examples with links. Users and the public are entitled to the same detail. Complaints received by IFF show what was being restricted on Instagram as the period began. Here we are relying on our own inbound queries and requests for pro-bono help and legal assistance. 1) On 23 July, a story about the protests shared by a private account with 137 followers was made unavailable in India through what Instagram described as "an automated system implemented pursuant to legal requirements" under the IT Rules, 2021. 2) On 24 July, a reel by the journalist Ila Kazmi showing a Delhi Police facial recognition van scanning protesters at Jantar Mantar was withheld on a notice from "The Government of India / Law Enforcement under Section 79(3)(b)", which referred her to the Government of India for any questions. The Delhi High Court has directed the Home Ministry, the IT Ministry, the Delhi Police and Meta to produce the notice and will next hear the case on 17 November. 3) On 28 July, three days after the minister's resignation, Instagram withheld a video published on 15 June by the current-affairs page Unmutezone under the title "Why Modi Can't Ask Dharmendra Pradhan to Resign?". Its editor reported that a second video was blocked on 3 August. Press reports describe similar restrictions. Newslaundry reported that an interview by the journalist Yaqut Ali with a former CJP spokesperson, posted on 26 July, was blocked in India within minutes, and that Facebook reels on the protests by the creator Jyoti Yadav, including an interview with AAP's Sanjay Singh, were restricted. It later reported restrictions on Instagram posts by Scroll and The Hindu about pellet-gun victims in Kashmir. None of this content is violent or inciteful, and Meta has not said whether it forms part of the figure. The Home Ministry is involved at each stage from notices under Section 79(3)(b) reach platforms through the Sahyog portal, which I4C operates where close to 1.95 lakh blocking orders were issued to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube between March and July 2026, most of them through the portal, and Meta has integrated its systems with it so that flagged content can be restricted without human review. On 27 July the Delhi Police, which reports to the Home Ministry, was reported to have directed platforms to remove posts it considered offensive to the Prime Minister. Meta's transparency report lists violence and incitement among the categories that I4C refers to it. A ministry that operates this channel and also reviews Meta's enforcement figures and algorithm is supervising online speech. We regret to state that the Supreme Court's own proceedings have provided an avenue for such censorship without sufficient checks and balances. In the suo motu digital arrest case, in which it directed intermediaries to place their proposals before I4C, and in the Just Rights for Children Alliance matters, in which it indicated that platforms may lose safe harbour, the Court has largely acted as a facilitator of executive action rather than as an adjudicator of its constitutional limits. The objectives of curbing fraud and protecting children are legitimate, but the supervision they have enabled now extends to lawful speech and results in censorship without legal authority. These restrictions do not have a basis in law and often executive rulemaking is being used to circumvent the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression. Section 79(3)(b) sets a condition for a platform's immunity and in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015), the Supreme Court confined it to court orders and government notifications within Article 19(2). The power to block lies in Section 69A, which requires written reasons, committee review and, following Tanul Thakur (2022), a copy of the order and a hearing for the author. Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules requires each intimation to state reasons, the provision, the unlawful act and the URL, and to be reviewed monthly by a Secretary-rank officer. These requirements cannot be met through an automated integration with a three-hour deadline, whatever share of the 61,000 posts came through Sahyog. Further, we state that while it may constitute a category of harmful speech, "Violent and inciteful" is not a ground for state mandated censorship under Article 19(2). Shreya Singhal protects discussion and advocacy and permits restriction only at the stage of incitement; a video asking why a minister has not resigned is discussion. Nor is there any clear statutory basis for I4C to perform the function of review a platform's content guidelines or to ask which accounts its algorithm promotes. Our demands 1) The Ministry of Home Affairs must publish the minutes of its meetings with Meta in 2026 and state how many of the 61,000 posts were flagged by I4C, the Delhi Police or any other agency through Sahyog. 2) Meta must publish a breakdown of the 61,000 posts by the rule or law applied, the action taken and the requesting authority, and give each affected user the notice on which it acted. Further monthly breakdowns with qualitative disclosure is necesary. 3) I4C must withdraw its requests to review Meta's draft guidelines and to be briefed on its algorithm. Oversight of this kind requires a law made by Parliament and may only be performed by an independent regulatory body with a clear mandate and objective. 4) The Union Government must publish the monthly Secretary-level reviews under Rule 3(1)(d) for July and August 2026. 5) Meta must end the automatic execution of government and police flags in India and provide human review, a reasoned notice and an opportunity to respond before any restriction. Users whose posts or accounts were restricted in India in July or August 2026 may write to [email protected] with screenshots of each notice.

YouTube @dhruv_rathee says Delhi Police tried to clone his phone and failed only because their software was too old for his iPhone. In January, Home Minister Amit Shah personally cleared the NIA to buy Cellebrite, the Israeli phone-extraction tool, bypassing Make in India rules. About ₹5 crore. The spec sheet names iPhones 11 to 14 and specific Android models. Cellebrite bypasses your passcode and pulls everything. Every app, every chat, every photo. No law says when police may do this, to whom, or how long they keep it. This is not about one YouTuber. Phones have been seized from protesters and journalists too. IFF has filed RTIs, and has a petition in the Supreme Court on surveillance powers. Are we comfortable with the NIA, the Home Ministry and State police buying this, with no rulebook? Happy Diwali. May the diyas of liberty light up our lives. #Cellebrite #Surveillance #Privacy #DigitalRights #DhruvRathee #NIA #DelhiPolice #IFF

If your phone was taken in Delhi last month, do not reset it. Traces of an extraction can survive on the device and may be the only proof of what was done. Write to us at [email protected]. Every document we relied on is linked in the post. (9/10)

On 10 Oct Delhi Police detained @dhruv_rathee and took his phone. On @kunalkamra88’s podcast with @ShyamMeeraSingh he said he believes they tried to clone it with Cellebrite. We can’t verify that. But we can show what the government buys. (1/10) Writes @Vikram0Raj : internetfreedom.in/the-home-…