The Government has notified the Information Technology (Guidelines for cyber Café Rules 2011). The Rules provide the detailed guidelines for cyber café holders interalia for registration of cyber café and preserving the records in respect of the users or any person who uses the services at such cyber café.
After taking a considered view in consultation with Ministry of Home Affairs and Telecom Service Providers, it has been decided that issuing the directives to obtain documents of identification and maintaining brief details of the caller before he makes a call from Public Telephone booths, may not be appropriate at present as besides the privacy issue & potential misuse of documents/information of the callers, this arrangement may deprive a section of the society to make a call as photo identity proof currently may not be available with every citizen. By mandating such directions, even general public may not be able to contact their families in emergency situations. Further, this solution is not practicable as beside the Village Panchayat Telephones (VPT), out of total 33.68 Lakhs (approximate) Public Call Offices, nearly eight lakhs are unmanned Coin Collection Box (CCB) Type. As such mandating such instructions may create more problems to the common citizens instead of helping security agencies in tracing the hoax calls.
This information was given by Shri Milind Deora, Minister of State for C&IT in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.
***************