52 XXXV. BECAUSE the serious privacy harms entailed in surveillance require that there must be a threshold level of gravity before surveillance can be ordered. The phrase “investigation of any offence” militates against this requirement, and therefore vests disproportionate powers in the government. In this context, it is respectfully submitted that other statutes authorising a form of surveillance have taken gravity into account: for example, the Habitual Offenders Act stipulates both that the offence in question must be of a serious character, and must be committed repeatedly, before the surveillance-and- reporting requirements kick in. In addition, it is submitted that authorizing incursions into the private domain in the course of investigation is, traditionally, within the exclusive domain of the judiciary alone (akin to the judiciary’s power to issue warrants for search and seizure of premises), and the fact that Section 69 of the IT Act can be deployed in the investigation of criminal offences without any judicial oversight whatsoever is contrary to the horizontal separation of powers established under the Constitution of India. XXXVI. BECAUSE a cumulative reading of Section 69 of the IT Act along with the 2009 IT Rules reveals that they are overbroad, vague, and disproportionate. Rule 9 of the IT Rules envisages that the direction of interception, monitoring, or decryption shall be of “any information” generated, transmitted, received, or stored in any computer resource, as is sent to or from any “class of persons” or “relating to any particular subject”. However, it does not provide any guidance the Executive on how these “class of persons” is to be determined, or what is the safeguard to ensure that the “class of persons” remains limited and does