India Plans to Monitor Information on Social Media Sites

India Plans to Monitor Information on Social Media Sites

The Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba, along with senior officers of the Ministry of Home Affairs, security agencies, and Department of Telecommunications, held a meeting Thursday with representatives of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Whatsapp, You Tube, and Instagram.

The meeting aimed to review actions taken to prevent misuse of social media sites by undesirable elements and miscreants to spread rumours, cause unrest, incite cyber crimes especially against women and children and other activities detrimental to national interest.

The representatives of these social media sites briefed the government representatives about actions taken by them to ensure blocking of websites, removal of objectionable / malicious contents from public view.

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The Union Home Secretary called upon them to take concrete steps to ensure a robust and effective system for preventing misuse of their platforms for activities detrimental to national security.

He also asked them to nominate India-based Grievance Redressal Officers, develop a monitoring mechanism for time bound preventive and other actions to remove objectionable content from public view, and prompt sharing of information sought by Law Enforcement Agencies for investigation purposes. All social media platforms assured full cooperation in this regard.

Union Home Secretary had earlier held a review with the representatives of social media platforms in June 2018. Thereafter, a series of meetings has been held with Law Enforcement Agencies and social media service providers to ensure effective measures to prevent misuse of these platforms by anti-national elements.

Photo courtesy: Press Information Bureau