Will not monitor social media; Centre backtracks in Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: In a major development, the Centre on Friday informed the Supreme Court that there will be no monitoring of the social media and it has scrapped its plan to set up a Social Media Communication Hub (SMCH).

The Centre had earlier proposed to set up SMCH to track and monitor various social media platforms to identify "buzz creators".

The submission on behalf of the Centre was made by Attorney General K K Venugopal, who informed the top court that the government is withdrawing the proposal. 

The A-G made this submission before a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice DY Chandrachud.

The Centre told the Supreme Court that it will undertake a complete review of its social media policy and has withdrawn its notification proposing a social media hub, which some alleged could become a tool to monitor online activity of citizens. 

The clarification from the Centre came in response to a petition filed by Trinamool Congress MLA Mahua Moitra for stalling the Information and Broadcasting Ministry's move to keep a tab on social media platforms.

TMC MLA Mahua Moitra had alleged 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. 

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 a 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 July 13, the apex court had asked the government to clarify whether its move to create such a hub was to tap people's WhatsApp messages, and observed that it will be like creating a "surveillance state". 

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 a related development, Centre today informed that nearly 700 URLs have been blocked by the social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter this year.

While replying to a query during the Question Hour, Minister for Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said that government has asked the social media companies to find technological solutions to ensure that rumours and fake news do not proliferate on their platforms.

Prasad said while the government was pressing for more accountability of social media companies, it was clear that the right of the people to raise questions has to be upheld.

There is a need to have a consensus on what constitutes fake news, Prasad said.

The minister said several URLs have been blocked by these companies in compliance with the provisions of the Information Technology Act in recent past.

He said till June this year, the number of URLs blocked by Facebook was 499, YouTube 57, Twitter 88, Instagram 25 and Tumblr 28.

Prasad was responding to several members who had raised questions about the spread of fake news on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp and sought to know what the government was doing in this regard. Some incidents of lynching were also linked to the spread of fake news.

In response to Centre's directive, 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 has the ability to 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 form of "the inability to see problematic content spreading through private conversations on our app". 

(With Agency inputs)