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Introduction
More than 2.3 billion people, accounting for more than a third of the world’s population, had access to internet in 2011, and by 2017, these figures are going to grow to 70 per cent of the world’s population (UNODC, 2013a, 2013b). Interspersed within this revolution, cybercrimes are also rising exponentially. Several reports including one by Symantec suggest the gargantuan nature of the problem and the economic costs involved with it. This phenomenon is however not lost on national governments. They through legislative action or otherwise are intervening in this space and are doing so in ways that are often unacceptable according to modern human rights principles. Existing literature suggests that there are myriad ways in which governments are intervening in the cyberspace. Surveillance is an instrument with which modern societies discipline and control populations; observation and inspection is used as a basis for judgment and intervention; enabling supposedly deviant individuals to be brought under corrective action to normalize them in accordance with dominant societal expectations (Foucault, 1977). Indeed, electronic evidence collected through surveillance is increasingly being used to identify offenders and mediate punishment (Pattavina, 2004). ECHELON is a global network of electronic spy stations that can eavesdrop on communications through telephones, faxes and computers. This secretive network was originally created by five countries, viz., USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand for global eavesdropping (Guardian, 2001). It is also used to monitor organizations like Greenpeace and Amnesty International whose agenda might be critical to US political policies (Sykes, 1999). In 2013, Reuters uncovered a secret unit of US Drug Enforcement Agency known as the Special Operations Division comprising of sleuths from Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, etc. which provides information from wiretaps, internet intercepts and phone records to law enforcement agencies for criminal investigation of US citizens (Shiffman and Cooke, 2013). Similarly, China systematically deletes discussion on Tibet, Taiwan, Falun Gong Spiritual Movement and discussions on Democracy on the internet (Martinsons et al., 2005). In 2011, Scotland Police admitted to monitoring social networking sites in the wake of British Riots to anticipate the spread of urban unrest (Scotsman, 2011). A direct consequence of this surveillance state is Self-Censorship imposed by internet users upon themselves. This in fact is...