Centre has 'change of heart' on proposed social media hub
New Delhi: In a U-turn, the centre on Friday told the Supreme Court that it was withdrawing its notification proposing to create a social media hub, which some have alleged could become a tool to monitor online activities of citizens. The government also said it would undertake a complete review of its social media policy.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra considered the submission of Attorney General K K Venugopal, appearing for the Centre, that the notification was being withdrawn, and disposed of petitions challenging it.
Venugopal also told the bench, comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, that the social media policy would be reviewed entirely by the government.
The bench was hearing a petition filed by TMC MLA Mahua Moitra alleging that the Centre's social media hub policy was to be used as a tool to monitor social media activities of the citizens and should be quashed.
On July 13, the apex court had asked the government whether its move to create such a hub was to tap people's WhatsApp messages, and observed that it would be like creating a "surveillance state".
The Trinamool Congress legislator from West Bengal had asked whether the government wants to tap citizens' messages on WhatsApp or other social media platforms.
Moitra had said the government had issued a Request For Proposal (RFP). The tender will be opened on August 20 for software which would do 360-degree monitoring on all social media platforms such WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram and track e-mail contents, she said.
On June 18, the apex court refused to an urgent hearing on the plea seeking to stay the ministry's move to set up a 'Social Media Communication Hub' (SMCH) that would collect and analyse digital and social media content. In May this year, the Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL), a public sector undertaking under the ministry, had floated a tender to supply software for the project.
WhatsApp, which was recently under fire over fake and provocative messages being circulated on its platform, had informed the IT and Electronics Ministry that it could prevent spam, but blocking can be done only based on user reports since it cannot see the content of private messages.
Detailing the proactive steps to tackle abuse on its platform, WhatsApp had said it retains limited information and is end-to-end encrypted. But this privacy protection has trade-offs in the form of "the inability to see problematic content spreading through private conversations on our app".
