When Regulation Becomes Suppression: Internet Censorship and the Erosion of the Right to Know

By Shourya Singh

Introduction: The New Age of Control

The internet has turned education, governance, and communication into a networked

participatory culture. This digital space was once used for accessing relevant information,

which these days, have become a site of control and regulation. The Governments of today

possess unparalleled technological capabilities to censor, filter, or monitor information which is commonly justified on the basis of national security, morality, or public order. Censorship, wherever it occurs on the internet, is more than just content removal. It encompasses far darker corners. Such as algorithmic down ranking, delaying, localization of requests, and surveillance-driven self-censorship. Freedom of information, on the other hand, is a constitutional protection provided to citizen with respect to access, collection and

dissemination of information. This is an important cornerstone of a democratic society.

The primary objective of this academic paper is first to place the Right to Information at the

forefront as a vital issue in the Indian Constitution and subsequently to assess the extent of

the different government-imposed internet restrictions—namely, content filtering, controlling

intermediaries, and shutting down—impacting the Freedom of Speech guaranteed by Article 19(1) (a) and the Right to Information Act, 2005 particularly. The research, though

predominantly centered on India, gives a very brief mention of the US to provide a general

framework for differentiating between various regulatory approaches to online speech. The

paper adopts a critical stance and investigates if such censorship can be justified in terms of legality, necessity, proportionality, and public interest under the three constitutional criteria in the digital era.

Legal Limits to Internet Censorship

Freedom of expression is the overriding principle in the constitutional law of nearly all

democracies with extremely narrow exceptions. Free speech is assured by Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution and Article 19(2) permits ‘reasonable restrictions’ in the sphere of

sovereignty, public order, and morals. Article 19 of the ICCPR also provides for a balance

between freedom of expression and other rights and public order. However, since the advent of cyber spaces, these exceptions have been operationalised with increasing sophistication.

The Information Technology Act, 2000, gives the Indian government the power to censor

online content on grounds of security or public order under Section 69A. Even though the

provision was constitutionally upheld by the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal v. Union of

India (2015), the same judgment struck down Section 66A on the grounds of vagueness and with the consideration of the fact that censorship of the internet would be required to satisfy the test of legality, necessity, and proportionality. In the international context, the Digital Services Act of the European Union places on platforms the obligations of due diligence, risk assessment, and content accountability in order to safeguard users and maintain public order. Meanwhile, the United States Communications Decency Act, through Section 230, affords

the intermediaries a very little liability so that free expression can be preserved, which

indicates the different regulatory balances between the two jurisdictions that favour different

aspects.

Nevertheless, the situation of enforcement remains unclear, and this holds true for all the

legal systems that are in place. The state takedown notices, the filtering software algorithms, and the commercial moderation policies are seldom made public, and this results in the citizens having no way to contest the censorship decisions that have been made, thus bypassing the democratic process and the rule of law.

Right to Information in the Digital Age

The Right to Information has evolved from being a mere procedural right into a substantive

right and sine qua non to democratic governance. UN General Assembly Resolution 59(I)

states that freedom of information cannot be derogated, which established transparency and people’s participation in a democratic nation. The Right to Information Act, 2005, was

enacted to ensure citizens’ access to state-held information and to strengthen accountability.

However, the internet age placed it out of easy reach. When virtual sites, informational sites,

research centres, or watchdog blogs are shut down, blocked, or censored, citizens are

effectively denied access to knowledge under the guise of public interest. Web censorship is therefore not simply a matter of free speech but a function that limits the right to know. The follow-up “data nationalism” is making all this increasingly difficult. All nations now

demand data localisation in the spirit of sovereignty, but that is discouraging cross-border

information and openness.

Socio-Political Implications of Internet Censorship

Censorship, even if permitted as a tool to combat disinformation or hate speech,

proportionately has far-reaching implications. Grounds such as “national security” or “public

order” are frequently relied upon by governments to justify regulatory measures that can have incidental effects on dissent, protest activity, and journalistic practice. This is done in the form of ‘digital blackouts’ or internet shutdowns which are deliberate, short-term interruption of internet or telecommunication services that is carried out by governmental organizations in order to regulate the dissemination of information or keep the peace. India ranks 2nd as of 2024, with 84 shutdowns and the shutdowns are usually ordered under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Although described as a measure of preventing unrest, the shutdowns interrupt education, medicine, and trade and harm the marginalized communities. Parallelly, social media censoring of information is a separate though equally complex issue. Ungovernable censoring gatekeepers like Facebook, X (previously Twitter), and YouTube dominate public debate. Their opaque content rules, in most instances supplemented by state pressure or financial motivation, are no less privatised censorship. The socio-political effect is more than information management.

Ethical and International Perspectives

At the core of the censorship debate lays a fundamental question of ethics: who has the right to determine what is to be conveyed to the people? Internationally, in the absence of universal standards, there exists the liberty of the state to exercise liberty and justify censorship in culturally relative terms. “Preservation of culture” or “anti-terror” myth is employed by authoritarian states to justify blanket surveillance. Democracies must suppress pluralism if they are to have any chance in the world of being

able to feel responsible. International human rights jurisprudence offers important safeguards. The European Court of Human Rights also required that content control through the Internet must be “necessary in a democratic society”, reminding others that censorship can never be indiscriminate. This has strengthened safeguards for free expression and promoted proportional regulation. This approach has had a largely positive impact by encouraging accountability and transparency, while cautioning states against indiscriminate censorship that can undermine democratic participation and public discourse.

Equally, the same rights accorded to people off-line must be accorded on-line as required by the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 20/8.The ethical dilemma goes deeper with artificial intelligence.

Reconciling Regulation and Rights: The Way Forward

A proper internet regulatory model will have to discover the common ground between the

imposed control and the full freedom to access information. Proportionality, the principle that only the restrictions which are necessary and strictly defined can be imposed, should be the ruling principle for all censorship laws. Judicial supervision is the strongest guarantee against regulatory power being misused.

The case of Shreya Singhal v. Union of India was a landmark decision which reiterated that

intermediaries could not be able to eliminate any online content at all without having a valid

legal authorization, thus, eliminating the unreasonable removal obligations set by Section

66A of the IT Act. This implied the right to Section 79 and laid the foundation for the

Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules,

2021 that emphasized due process and transparency in content blocking. Besides, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 stresses the legal, purpose-based data processing and accountability which will, if indirectly, protect the online informational autonomy.

Additionally, to the legal protection, public awareness and digital literacy are other important

factors. An informed citizenry aware of its digital rights and responsibilities remains central

to preserving democratic discourse in the digital age.

In the end, power over information control gets transformed instead of a discussion on the

power's existence taking place. Today's digital regulation is less about very clear-cut legal

commands and more about the control over access, speed, and visibility of information. This indirect method of governing can bring about the conditioning of the populace to consider informational uncertainty as a regular characteristic of public life. The author identifies as the leading long-term danger the slow erasure of the democratic expectation that access to information must be justified, not negotiated. Should access to information be made conditional, the constitutional guarantees run the risk of becoming ineffective in their meaning. So, the question of internet governance in future boils down to whether the

transparency will be viewed as a democratic obligation or merely an administrative option. A democracy that is not willing to allow even during the crisis a situation of utmost clarity in

regard to information risks not only losing the faith of the public but also undermining its

very constitutional foundations.

Keywords: Digital Governance, Right to Information, Freedom of Expression, Internet

Censorship