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Overview of the Advisory

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On 18 November 2025, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) published an Advisory that addresses all of the private satellite television channels in India. The advisory is one of the critical institutional interventions to the broadcast of sensitive content regarding recent security incidents concerning the blast at the Red Fort on November 10^th, 2025. This advisory came after the Ministry noticed that some news channels have been broadcasting content related to alleged persons involved in Red Fort blasts, justifying their acts of violence, as well as information/video on explosive material. Broadcasting like this at this critical situation may inadvertently encourage or incite violence, disrupt public order, and pose risks to national security. 

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Key Instructions under the Advisory

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The advisory provides certain guidelines to the TV channels to ensure strict compliance with the Programming and Advertising Code under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995. The television channels are advised to exercise the highest level of discretion and sensitivity possible in reporting on issues involving alleged perpetrators of violence, and especially when reporting on matters involving the justification of acts of violence or providing instructional media on making explosive materials. The fundamental focus is to be very strict in following the Programme and Advertising Code as stipulated in the Cable Television Network Rules. In particular, broadcasters should not make programming that:

• Contain anything obscene, defamatory, deliberately false, or suggestive innuendos and half-truths.
• Likely to encourage or incite violence, contain anything against the maintenance of law and order, or promote an anti-national attitude.
• Contain anything that affects the integrity of the Nation.
• Could aid, abet or promote unlawful activities.

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Responsible Reporting Framework

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The advisory does not constitute outright censorship but instead a self-regulatory system that depends on the discretion and sensitivity of the TV channels focused on differentiating between broadcasting legitimate news and the content that crosses the threshold from information dissemination to incitement. 

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Why This Advisory is Important in a Digital Age

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With the modern media systems, there has been an erosion of the line between the journalism of the traditional broadcasting medium and digital virality. The contents of television are no longer limited to the scheduled programs or cable channels of distribution. The contents of a single news piece, especially that of dramatic or contentious nature, can be ripped off, revised and repackaged on social media networks within minutes of airing- often without the context, editorial discretion or timing indicators.

This effect makes sensitive content have a multiplier effect. The short news item about a suspect justifying violence or containing bombs can be viewed by millions on YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter/X, Facebook, by spreading organically and being amplified by an algorithm. Studies have shown that misinformation and sensational reporting are much faster to circulate compared to factual corrections- a fact that has been noticed in the recent past during conflicts and crisis cases in India and other parts of the world.

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Vulnerabilities of Information Ecosystems

• The advisory is created in a definite information setting that is characterised by:
• Rapid Viral Mechanism: Content spreads faster than the process of verification. 
• Algorithmic-driven amplification: Platform mechanism boosts emotionally charged content.
• Coordinated amplification networks: Organised groups are there to make these posts, videos viral, to set a narrative for the general public. 
• Deepfake and synthetic media risks: Original broadcasts can be manipulated and reposted with false attribution. 

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Interconnection with Cybersecurity and National Security

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Verified or sensationalised reporting of security incidents poses certain weaknesses:

1. Trust Erosion: Trust is broken when the masses observe broadcasters in the air giving unverified claims or emotional accounts as facts. This is even to security agencies, law enforcement and government institutions themselves. The lack of trust towards the official information gives rise to information gaps, which are occupied by rumours, conspiracy theories, and enemy tales.
2. Cognitive Fragmentation: Misinformation develops multiple versions of the truth among the people. The narratives given to citizens vary according to the sources of the media that they listen to or read. This disintegration complicates organising the collective response of the society an actual security threat because the populations can be organised around misguided stories and not the correct data.
3. Radicalisation Pipeline: People who are interested in finding ideological backgrounds to violent action might get exposed to media-created materials that have been carefully distorted to evidence justifications of terrorism as a valid political or religious stand.

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How Social Instability Is Exploited in Cyber Operations and Influence Campaigns

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Misinformation causes exploitable vulnerability in three phases. 

1. First, conflicting unverified accounts disintegrate the information environment-populations are presented with conflicting versions of events by various media sources. 
2. Second, institutional trust in media and security agencies is shaken by exposure to subsequently rectified false information, resulting in an information vacuum. 
3. Third, in such a distrusted and puzzled setting, the population would be susceptible to organised manipulation by malicious agents.
4. Sensationalised broadcasting gives opponents assets of content, narrative frameworks, and information gaps that they can use to promote destabilisation movements. These mechanisms of exploitation are directly opposed by responsible broadcasting.

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Media Literacy and Audience Responsibility

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Structural Information Vulnerabilities-

A major part of the Indian population is structurally disadvantaged in information access:

• Language barriers: Infrastructure in the field of fact-checking is still highly centralised in English and Hindi, as vernacular-language misinformation goes viral in Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Punjabi, and others.

• Digital literacy gaps: It is estimated that there are about 40 million people in India who have been trained on digital literacy, but more than 900 million Indians access digital content with different degrees of ability to critically evaluate the content.
• Divides between rural and urban people: Rural citizens and less affluent people experience more difficulty with access to verification tools and media literacy resources.
• Algorithmic capture: social media works to maximise engagement over accuracy, and actively encourages content that is emotionally inflammatory or divisive to its users, according to their history of engagement.

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Conclusion

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The advisory of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is an acknowledgment of the fact that media accountability is a part of state security in the information era. It states the principles of responsible reporting without interference in editorial autonomy, a balance that various stakeholders should uphold. Implementation of the advisory needs to be done in concert with broadcasters, platforms, civil society, government and educational institutions. Information integrity cannot be handled by just a single player. Without media literacy resources, citizens are unable to be responsible in their evaluation of information. Without open and fast communication with the media stakeholders, government agencies are unable to combat misinformation. 

The recommendations include collaborative governance, i.e., institutional forms in which media self-regulation, technological protection, user empowerment, and policy frameworks collaborate and do not compete. The successful deployment of measures will decide whether India can continue to have open and free media without compromising on information integrity that is sufficient to provide national security, democratic governance and social stability during the period of high-speed information flow, algorithmic amplification, and information warfare actions.

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References

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https://mib.gov.in/sites/default/files/2025-11/advisory-18.11.2025.pdf

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Introduction

For two decades, cybercrime enforcement was built around a simple assumption: criminals hide behind screens, but they still operate mostly within reachable borders. That assumption has collapsed. Today's fraud economy runs through industrial-scale scam compounds in Myanmar and Cambodia, laundering networks spanning a dozen jurisdictions, and trafficked labour forced to defraud victims thousands of miles away. INTERPOL's own trend reporting has tracked victims from more than 60 countries pulled into scam operations that now stretch well beyond Southeast Asia into Africa, the Gulf, and Latin America. Global losses from this activity are estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and the networks rebuild faster than any single government can dismantle them.

A Threat That Outran the Old Playbook

The mismatch is the real story behind a wave of policy moves in 2025 and 2026. The August 12, 2026 U.S. National Security Presidential Memorandum authorising vetted private companies to conduct government-supervised offensive cyber operations against transnational criminal organisations is one data point in that wave, not the whole story. Washington's move sits alongside a broader, still-unfinished experiment: can the international system build cooperative machinery fast enough to match a threat that treats borders as an inconvenience rather than a barrier?

Three Tracks of International Response

Three distinct but overlapping tracks have emerged.

The treaty: The most consequential recent development is the UN Convention against Cybercrime, adopted by the General Assembly in December 2024 and opened for signature in Hanoi in October 2025, where 71 states and the EU signed on. It is the first comprehensive global treaty addressing cybercrime and cross-border evidence sharing, building on the older Budapest Convention framework that has anchored cooperation since 2004. The Hanoi Convention needs 40 ratifications to enter into force; as of mid-2026, only three states (Qatar, Azerbaijan, and Vietnam) had ratified it, and human rights groups continue to warn that its broad scope could be used by authoritarian governments to justify surveillance and cross-border data requests dressed up as cybercrime cooperation. The treaty's fate will hinge on a Conference of States Parties process now being negotiated, where democracies are pushing for genuine multi-stakeholder oversight rather than a rubber stamp.

The operational track: While treaty diplomacy moves slowly, police-to-police cooperation has scaled up dramatically. INTERPOL's Operation First Light, now an annual standing initiative, illustrates the trajectory: its 2026 iteration spanned January to April, generated over 5,800 arrests and roughly $293 million in intercepted funds, and made heavy use of the Global Rapid Intervention of Payments mechanism to freeze illicit transfers before they disappeared into crypto wallets. A parallel operation led by Dubai Police with the FBI and Chinese authorities dismantled nine pig-butchering compounds across Myanmar, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Thailand, seizing more than $701 million. In Europe, Europol's EMPACT framework has entered a new 2026–2029 cycle, deepening ties with Frontex, Eurojust, and regional partners like Ameripol and the EL PACTTO programme in Latin America, effectively building a lattice of standing coordination bodies rather than one-off task forces. These operations demonstrate real capacity, but they also expose the "whack-a-mole" problem: raided compounds in Myanmar's Myawaddy region simply relocated, reconnected via satellite internet, and resumed operations within weeks, according to regional reporting.

The public-private track: This is where the U.S. memorandum fits into a genuinely global pattern rather than standing alone. The United Kingdom's 2026–2029 Fraud Strategy centres on a £31 million Online Crime Centre, opening in 2026, that fuses data from the National Crime Agency, the intelligence community, and private partners across banking, telecoms, and technology into a single coordination hub building on existing arrangements like Stop Scams UK, where telecom operators and banks already share suspicious SIM and account data in near real time. In the U.S., a June 2026 joint action involving the Justice Department, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Coinbase froze $3.8 billion in cryptocurrency and disrupted 1.4 million fraud-linked accounts, showing that platform cooperation can move faster than formal treaty processes. Singapore has positioned itself as a hub for this model too, anchoring the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, which now includes ASEAN's own foundation as a member, bringing governments, banks, and tech platforms into shared intelligence loops. What distinguishes the U.S. memorandum is that it goes a step further than data-sharing: it authorises companies to take disruptive technical action, not just contribute intelligence, under a legal theory that folds them into the government's own authority under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act's law-enforcement exception.

Where the System Still Breaks Down

Despite this activity, structural gaps, like jurisdiction, are the deepest ones. Scam compounds deliberately locate in special economic zones and border regions precisely because territorial control there is contested or weak, leaving no single government with clean authority to act. ASEAN's own policy work acknowledges that nearly every stage of the regional scam value chain crosses at least one border, which is why the bloc has shifted toward standing coordination bodies like its Working Group on Anti-Online Scams rather than relying on bilateral requests.

Attribution and accountability lag behind operational tempo. Financial intelligence and blockchain analytics have improved enforcement precision, but identifying the human traffickers and financiers sitting above front-line scam operators remains slow, uneven, and dependent on political will in host countries.

Governance of the newer public-private authorities is also unsettled. Human rights advocates flag that expanding both the Hanoi Convention's surveillance-adjacent powers and unilateral hack-back authorities like the U.S. memorandum could, without careful oversight, blur the line between fighting organised fraud and enabling broader digital overreach. The U.S. memorandum's own guardrails, which are a ban on operations causing serious injury or rising to a use of force, mandatory federal sign-off, and a $1 million forfeitable bond, reflect an awareness of that risk, but its implementing procedures remain classified, and comparable transparency gaps exist in several other national programs.

The Emerging Consensus

What's notable is not any single instrument but the convergence: nearly every serious national or regional response now combines the same three ingredients deeper platform and financial-sector data sharing, standing multilateral operational coordination, and a cautious expansion of what non-state actors are permitted to do. The countries and blocs making the fastest progress, from the UK's Online Crime Centre to INTERPOL's payment-interdiction tools to ASEAN's regional information-sharing arrangement, are the ones treating cyber-enabled transnational crime as a persistent infrastructure problem rather than a series of discrete crimes to be prosecuted after the fact. Whether that convergence produces durable results or simply better-coordinated whack-a-mole will depend on the unglamorous work still ahead: ratifying treaties, writing classified rulebooks, and building the cross-border trust that lets financial and technical data move as fast as the criminals do.

Conclusion 

Transnational cybercrime has outgrown fragmented national enforcement. The emerging combination of international treaties, operational cooperation, and public-private partnerships offers a stronger response, but serious gaps in jurisdiction, accountability, and oversight remain. Ultimately, success will depend on whether states can build cooperation and safeguards capable of matching criminals’ speed, adaptability, and global reach.

Sources

• Presidential Memorandum: Expanding Capabilities to Combat Transnational Cyber-Enabled Crime — The White House
• United Nations Convention against Cybercrime — UNODC
• The Promise and Peril of the U.N. Convention Against Cybercrime — Just Security
• Moving Forward with the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime — ICCLR
• Growing threat of transnational scam centres highlighted at INTERPOL General Assembly
• Over 5,800 arrests, USD 293 million intercepted in global fraud bust — INTERPOL
• Operation First Light 2026: 276 Arrested, $701M Seized — Breached.Company

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Introduction

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In the fast-paced digital age, misinformation spreads faster than actual news. This was seen recently when inaccurate information on social media was spread, stating that the Election Commission of India (ECI) had taken down e-voter rolls for some states from its website overnight. The rumour confused the public and caused political debate in states like Maharashtra, MP, Bihar, UP and Haryana, resulting in public confusion. But the ECI quickly called the viral information "fake news" and made sure that voters could still get access to the electoral rolls of all States and Union Territories, available at voters.eci.gov.in. The incident shows how electoral information could be harmed by the impact of misinformation and how important it is to verify the authenticity. 

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The Incident and Allegations

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On August 7, 2025, social media posts on platforms like X and WhatsApp claimed that the Election Commission of India had removed e-voter lists from its website. The posts appeared after public allegations about irregularities in certain constituencies. However, the claims about the removal of voter lists were unverified.

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The Election Commission’s Response

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In a formal tweet posted on X, it stated categorically:

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“This is a fake news. Anyone can download the Electoral Roll for any of 36 States/UTs through this link: https://voters.eci.gov.in/download-eroll.”

The Commission clarified that no deletion has been done at all and that all the voters' rolls are intact and accessible to the public. Keeping with the spirit of transparency, the ECI reaffirmed its overall practice of public access to electoral information by clarifying that the system is intact and accessible for inspection.

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Importance of Timely Clarifications

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By countering factually incorrect information the moment it was spread on a large scale, the ECI stopped possible harm to public trust. Election officials rely upon being trusted, and any speculation concerning their honesty can prove harmful to democracy. Such prompt action stops false information from becoming a standard in public discourse.

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Misinformation in the Electoral Space

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• How False Narratives Gain Traction
  Election misinformation increases in significant political environments. Social media, confirmation bias, and increased emotional states during elections enable rumour spread. On this occasion, the unfounded report struck a chord with widespread political distrust, and hence, people easily believed and shared it without checking if it was true or not.

• Risks to Democratic Integrity
  When misinformation impacts election procedures, the consequences can be profound:

1. Erosion of Trust: People can lose faith in the neutrality of election administrators quite easily.
2. Polarization: Untrue assertions tend to reinforce political divides, rendering constructive communication more difficult.

• The Role of Media Literacy
  Combating such mis-disinformation requires more than official statements. Media skills training courses can equip individuals with the ability to recognise warning signs in suspect messages. Even basic actions like checking official sources prior to sharing can move far in keeping untruths from being spread.

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Strategies to Counter Electoral Misinformation

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Multi-Stakeholder Action

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Effective counteracting of electoral disinformation requires coordination among election officials, fact-checkers, media, and platforms.  Actions that are suggested include:

1. Rapid Response Protocols: Institutions should maintain dedicated monitoring teams for quick rebuttals.
2. Confirmed Channels of Communication: Providing official sites and pages for actual electoral news.
3. Proactive Transparency: Regular publication of electoral process updates can anticipate rumours.
4. Platform Accountability: Social media sites must label or limit the visibility of information found to be false by credentialed fact-checkers.

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Conclusion

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The recent allegations of e-voter rolls deletion underscore the susceptibility of contemporary democracies to mis-disinformation. Even though the circumstances were brought back into order by the ECI's swift and unambiguous denunciation, the incident itself serves to emphasise the necessity of preventive steps to maintain election faith. Even though fact-checking alone might not work in an environment where the information space is growing more polarised and algorithmic, the long-term solution to such complications is to grow an ironclad democratic culture where everyone, every organisation, and platforms value the truth over clickbait. The lesson is clear: in the age of instant news, accurate communication is vital for maintaining democratic integrity, not extravagances.

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References

• https://www.newsonair.gov.in/election-commission-dismisses-fake-news-on-removal-of-e-voter-rolls/
• https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/eci-dismisses-claims-of-removing-e-voter-rolls-from-its-website-calls-it-fake-news/articleshow/123190662.cms
• https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/vote-theft-claim-of-congress-factually-incorrect-election-commission/article69921742.ece
• https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/a-crisis-of-trust-on-the-election-commission-of-india/article69893682.ece

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