Taking a U-turn the Centre has taken back its proposal of creating a social media hub. The Centre told the apex court today in a hearing that it has decided to withdraw the notification proposing a ‘Social Media Communication Hub’ (SMCH) which some people alleged could be used to ‘monitor online activities of the citizens’.
A bench headed by CJI Dipak Misra and comprising of Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud was approached by Attorney General K K Venugopal on behalf of the Central government and told the court that the centre will withdraw the notification as well as review its social media policy.
While hearing the plea on July 13, the SC had commented, “The government wants to tap citizens’ WhatsApp messages. It will be like creating a surveillance state.”
The petition was filed by Trinamool Congress MLA, Mahua Moitra who claimed that the social media hub will be used by the Centre to monitor citizens’ online activities and thus breach their right of privacy. Moitra had questioned the motive of the central government which she alleged was to tap WhatsApp messages of the citizens or track their accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and their e-mails.
She said, SMCH “is being set up with the clear objective of surveillance of activities of individuals such as herself on social media platforms.”
Her petition quoted RFP–Request For Proposal which said that the technology platform “support easy management of conversational logs with each individual with capabilities to merge it across channels to help facilitate creating a 360-degree view of the people who are creating a buzz across various topics.”
The PIL said, “Specific capabilities mentioned include live search, monitoring, collecting, indexing and storage of personal data including location-based data and meta-data. The ability to monitor individual social media user/ accounts is a specific mandate being given to the service provider”, reported PTI.