Twitter can't avail of any fundamental rights remedies under Articles 19 or 21 as it is a foreign company, said the Indian government at the Karnataka High Court in its standoff with Twitter yesterday. It also doesn't have the mandate to "espouse" the cause of Twitter's users. Hearings before Justice Krishna S. Dixit will resume on March 6th. Remind me about this case? Last July, Twitter challenged 39 of the Indian government's orders to block content online. Those orders were issued under Section 69A of the Information and Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act). Content can be blocked under Section 69A on various grounds—like national security or public order. Twitter basically said that the orders violated the blocking procedure set out in Section 69A—questioning the government's “non-application of mind” when discerning whether content on Twitter posed an imminent threat to public order or not. This clamped down on its users' free speech rights, Twitter alleged. So, it went to the Karnataka High Court to challenge these blocking orders. The government filed its first objections to the petition around last September—but hearings have been adjourned multiple times since then. So, what happened yesterday then? If the lede to this story was a bit confusing, here's the breakdown. The Indian government is basically saying that Twitter can't file legal challenges about the violation of fundamental rights like free speech (Article 19) and liberty (Article 21). Why? Because it's a foreign company. As we reported last September, the government argued that: ...The protections of…
