The parliamentary panel on information technology will question government officials on allegations relating to suspected phone tapping of politicians, journalists and others using Pegasus spyware, the committee chairman and senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said on Tuesday, and asserted that it is the "most important issue" for many members.
With social networking sites Facebook and Twitter getting popular among masses, the Centre is creating a framework for "Citizen Engagement" to use social media for eliciting public views, an official said on Friday.
These awards had been constituted by the ministry of communications and information technology, government of India for the first time in order to acknowledge exemplary initiatives/practices of various states/UTs in the realm of e-governance for the dissemination of information and services to the citizens.
The Income-tax department has conducted searches at multiple premises of Chinese telecom company Huawei in the country as part of a tax evasion investigation, official sources said on Wednesday. The raids were launched at the company's premises in Delhi, Gurugram (Haryana) and Bengaluru in Karnataka on Tuesday. Sources said the officials looked at financial documents, account books and company records as part of a tax evasion investigation against the company, its Indian businesses and overseas transactions.
Senior bureaucrat Pradip Kumar Tripathi has been appointed as secretary (coordination) in the Cabinet Secretariat as part of a major bureaucratic reshuffle effected by the Centre on Monday.
The Delhi high court on Tuesday sought the Centre's response on a plea challenging the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which seeks to regulate digital news media.
Google's chief privacy officer, Keith Enright, has warned policymakers that frequent and large-scale sharing of citizen data, even if anonymized, can damage users' privacy. Pointing to research that shows data sets lose their anonymity if shared consistently over time, he said: "I would encourage policymakers and companies to be extremely circumspect while proceeding in that direction." Anonymization is a technique that removes or modifies personally identifiable information, resulting in data that cannot be associated with any one individual.
The 'Indira Gandhi award for best debut film' and the 'Nargis Dutt award for best feature film on national integration' have been retitled with the names of the late prime minister and legendary actor being dropped as part of a raft of changes for the National Film Awards, according to a notification.
Does IAS officers' work go unappreciated, asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
Ahead of the Union Cabinet expansion on Wednesday, several Union Ministers, including Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, Education Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar resigned from their posts.
VSNL intends to set up the unit through its wholly owned subsidiary, VSNL Global Services.
India has voiced deep concern over the deteriorating security situation and large-scale loss of civilian life in the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, urging the parties to work towards creating conditions necessary for peace and restarting direct negotiations through de-escalation and ending violence.
Overall mobile phone production was about 68 million in 2014, increased to 100 million in 2015 and 350-400 million in July 2016.
Amid a tussle between the Union government and Twitter over the new IT rules, officials of the microblogging site on Friday deposed before a parliamentary panel chaired by Congress's Shashi Tharoor over preventing misuse of social media.
Strengthening the portfolios of the home minister and the finance minister is a message that should not be missed, points out A K Bhattacharya.
Arshdeep Singh has incurred the wrath of social media users since Sunday when he dropped a catch in the closing stages of a tense India-Pakistan match.
Home-grown companies, including electronics manufacturing services (EMS) firm Dixon Technologies and mobile device maker Lava International, have started exploratory talks with Chinese sub-assemblies and component players for setting up joint ventures (JVs) in the country. Sources in the industry say many domestic companies have also had preliminary discussions with original design manufacturers (ODMs) in China to look at a JV model for manufacturing smartphones. Key ODM players in mobile devices in China include Longcheer, Huaqin, and Wingtech, which has already set up a plant in Tirupati.
Representatives of Facebook India have been asked to appear on Friday before the Joint Committee on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, chaired by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Meenakshi Lekhi, while Twitter officials are required to appear before the panel on October 28, as per the notice issued by the Lok Sabha Secretariat.
Although the credit for acquiring the technological skill must be given to India's outstanding nuclear scientists, the decision to go nuclear was a political one that entailed clarity of vision, courage and resolve, points out Rup Narayan Das.
"The Centre is planning to bring the Indian Institutes of Information Technology Bill, 2010 in the Parliament," director of IIIT-Allahabad M D Tiwari told PTI in Allahabad. He said a meeting to discuss the final draft of the bill was held in New Delhi last week in which top officials of the Union HRD ministry and directors of four IIITs took part.
In a communication to the ministry of electronics and information technology, the messaging service said it was committed to protecting the privacy of its over 400 million users in India.
All the three tax-free enclaves were given formal approval, which would have lapsed by end of this month. While the ministry granted extension of time 'on file', the decision has to be ratified by the inter-ministerial Board of Approval which is meeting here on June 17.
The government on Friday tweaked IT rules to pave the way for setting up of grievance appellate panels, which will settle issues that users may have against the way social media platforms initially addressed their complaints regarding content and other matters.
The Centre told the Supreme Court on Tuesday a new data protection bill is ready and will be introduced in the monsoon session of Parliament in July, as the apex court heard a matter related to privacy concerns of social media users.
Expressing concern over frequent internet shutdown without any empirical study, a Parliamentary panel has pulled up the Department of Telecommunications for not maintaining the record of incidents and inaction on several of its recommendations. The Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology on 'Suspension of Telecom Services and Internet and its impact' tabled in Lok Sabha on Thursday, the panel has asked the Department of Telecom (DoT) to lay down a clear cut principle of proportionality and procedure for lifting of shutdown in coordination with the home ministry to prevent any misuse of the suspension rules. The panel rejected the logic of the DoT and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for not maintaining the record of the shutdown, saying it cannot simply take the plea that police and public order are essentially state subjects and suspension of the internet does not actually come under the ambit of crimes.
Expressing concern over frequent internet shutdown without any empirical study, a parliamentary panel has pulled up the department of telecommunications for not maintaining the record of incidents and inaction on several of its recommendations.
The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) has arrested a person who the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) said has emerged as the mastermind of the racket of incorporating a large number of shell companies with Chinese links in India.
Fifteen Cabinet ministers and 28 Ministers of State were sworn-in by President Ram Nath Kovind at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Wednesday evening.
Congress MP and member of the panel Karti Chidambaram had requested Tharoor to take up the matter and call the officials of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry before the committee to seek clarification and remedial measures.
Unlike Israeli company NSO, whose sale of Pegasus cyber tech grabbed worldwide attention, and other manufacturers of offensive-cyber products, Cellebrite operates in a grey area between security exports and civilian ones.
While the SBI-led lenders' consortium is still working on ways to revive the once-storied Jet Airways, the civil aviation ministry has already awarded the carrier's slots at various airports to other airlines on a temporary basis.
The JSP has made an electoral alliance with main opposition Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist headed by K P Sharma Oli.
The Customs clearance required for moving equipment like laptops, desktops, etc out of SEZ units was delaying things as the clearance had to be taken in person after a first level of approval online.
More than 70 per cent of Indian youth aged between 15 and 29 can't!
The government on Wednesday ordered Twitter to immediately take down handles and hashtags that suggested a farmer genocide was being planned, saying such misinformation and inflammatory content will incite passion, and impact public order.
The mission objective is to ensure data continuity of ocean color and wind vector data to sustain the operational applications.
The ministry has also issued orders for blocking of two Twitter accounts, two Instagram accounts and one Facebook account involved in spreading 'coordinated anti-India disinformation'.
He said that during the interaction, he has seen that secretaries have vision, commitment and energy to take the country forward.
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