With cyber crimes increasing, the State Government on Saturday made cyber cafe registration mandatory.
While the commissioner of police is the licensing authority in the Twin Cities of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, the district collectors are designated authorities in the districts, said Information Technology (IT) Minister Raghunath Mohanty.
As per the Technology (Guidelines for Cyber Cafe) Rules, 2011, notified by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology on March 16, the State Government has to designate appropriate authority as agency to issue licence to cyber cafes.
The draft guidelines, issued by the Ministry of IT, said an officer not below the rank of police inspector will be authorised to check or inspect cyber cafes and computer resource or network established therein at any time for the compliance of these rules. The cyber cafe owner will provide every related document, registers and any necessary information to the inspecting officer on demand.
Cyber cafes should not allow any user to use its computer resource without the identity of the user being established. The intending users are required to establish his or her identify by producing a document to the satisfaction of the cyber cafe manager.
Identity card, issued by school or college, photo credit card or debit card issued by a bank or post office, permanent account number (PAN) card, photo identity card issued by the employer or any Government agency and driving licence are acceptable document to establish identity, Mohanty said.
When an user cannot establish his/her identify to the satisfaction of the cyber cafe, s/he may be photographed by the cafe owner using a web camera. Photographs shall be part of the log register which may be maintained in physical or electronic form.
Children without photo Identity cards shall be accompanied by an adult with identity proof.
The cyber cafe has to record and maintain the required information of each user in the log register for a minimum period of one year. Online version of the log register is also allowed.
The cyber cafes will prepare a monthly report of the log register showing date-wise details on usage of the computer resource and submit a hard and soft copy of the same to the licensing agency on the fifth day of next month.
All the computers in the cyber cafe will have to be equipped with the safety and filtering software to avoid access to websites containing pornography, obscenity, terrorism and other objectionable materials. The cyber cafes must display a board, clearly visible to the users, prohibiting them from viewing pornographic sites, the draft guideline said.