Section 66C penalizes identity theft (up to 3 years imprisonment and fine).
Section 66D penalizes cheating by personation using a computer resource (up to 3 years imprisonment).
Section 66E penalizes violation of privacy by transmitting private images (up to 3 years imprisonment).
Section 66F penalizes the grave offence of Cyber Terrorism (punishable with life imprisonment).
Section 67 penalizes the publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form (up to 5 years and fine).
Section 67A penalizes publishing material containing sexually explicit acts (harsher penalties than Section 67).
Section 66A (sending offensive messages) was struck down by the Supreme Court in the landmark Shreya Singhal v. Union of India case (2015).
The Act provides for a Cyber Appellate Tribunal to hear appeals against the orders of the Adjudicating Officer.
An Adjudicating Officer is appointed to determine penalties and compensation for cyber contraventions.
It established the Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA) to license and regulate Certifying Authorities.
The CCA oversees the issuance of Digital Signature Certificates in India.
A Certifying Authority (CA) is a trusted entity authorized to issue Digital Signature Certificates.
The Act mandates the establishment of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) as the national agency for incident response.
Section 69 empowers the government to issue directions for interception, monitoring, or decryption of data.
Section 69A empowers the government to issue directions for blocking public access to any information.
The Act allows for the declaration of any computer system as a Protected System (Section 70).
Section 78 grants the power to investigate cyber offences to a police officer not below the rank of Inspector.
The Act defines an “intermediary” (e.g., social media sites, ISPs, search engines) in relation to electronic messages.
Section 79 provides a “Safe Harbour” protection to intermediaries, exempting them from liability for user-generated content under certain conditions.
To retain Safe Harbour, intermediaries must observe “due diligence” as prescribed by the government.