Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra on Wednesday wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla flagging alerts received by several opposition leaders about 'state-sponsored' attacks on their iPhones, and urged him to provide them protection to continue doing their duties.
Opposition alliance INDIA on Thursday boycotted a meeting of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) of the Rajya Sabha to protest Prime Minister Narendra Modi not making a statement on Manipur violence in Parliament, a senior leader said.
After a report mentioned that Facebook overlooked its hate speech policies in cases of BJP MLA T Raja Singh and 3 others, Shashi Tharoor, chairperson of Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT, said the committee 'would certainly wish to hear from Facebook'.
Tharoor questioned about the alleged hacking of phones using spyware Pegasus, to which the officials responded that the matter is subjudice.
Members of a parliamentary committee on Thursday raised the issue of Twitter temporarily locking the account of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in 2020 as well as misrepresentation of the Indian map by the micro-blogging site, sources said.
The panel had called him on the issue of the citizens' data safety.
Last week, Twitter had blocked Union Information and Technology Minister Prasad from accessing his account which ratcheted up tensions with the government as it came under renewed attack for not following local laws.
The panel will likely play an important role as the Personal Data Protection Bill gets tabled in Parliament.
Some members of a parliamentary panel looking into the issue of hate speech on Facebook on Monday expressed the view that whistle-blowers Sophie Zhang and Frances Haugen, who have flagged bias and lack of proper regulation on the social media platform, be called to depose before it, sources said.
Five months after YouTube was banned in Pakistan for hosting clips from a controversial anti-Islam film, authorities have said there are no plans to remove restrictions on the popular video-sharing website in the immediate future.
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.
'Losers who cannot influence people even in their own party keep cribbing that the entire world is controlled by the BJP and RSS'
The agenda for the meeting is 'Evidence of the representatives of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Communication (Department of Telecommunications) on the subject of 'Citizens' data security and privacy'.
The demand for Tharoor's removal comes days after the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Technology was set to question government officials on the Pegasus spyware issue.
'Deplatforming Donald Trump, a sitting US president, sets a dangerous precedent. It has less to do with his views and more to do with intolerance for a differing point'
The Twitter officials were told that there should not be any "international interference" in the Lok Sabha polls.
Besides representatives of Facebook, the committee has asked representatives of the ministry of electronics and information technology to remain present on September 2 to discuss on the subject of "safeguarding citizens' rights and prevention of misuse of social/online news media platforms including special emphasis on women security in the digital space".
The political slugfest has been going on between the two, which started after Tharoor's announcement that the panel would like to hear from Facebook about the report published in Wall Street Journal claiming that the social media platform ignored applying its hate-speech rules to politicians of the ruling party in India.
Facebook and Google officials in New Delhi on Tuesday deposed before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology on the issue of misuse of social media platforms.
The home secretary is scheduled to brief the panel on home affairs on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir in the next meeting.
MPs asked if the platforms have the right to take down or suspend accounts.
After Twitter briefly blocked IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad from accessing his account for alleged copyrights violation, chairman of the parliamentary panel on information technology Shashi Tharoor on Friday said the same thing happened with him and the standing committee will be seeking an explanation from the social media firm over the temporary locking of their accounts and the rules it follows while operating in India.
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.
A day after his ministry rebuked Twitter for not complying with its orders to take down inflammatory content, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said social media platforms cannot give differential treatment while handling problems on Capitol Hill and the Red Fort.
'The reality is no one, including some of the names that have shown up in the last few weeks, have any unilateral decision-making power in this,' Facebook India MD Ajit Mohan tells Peerzada Abrar.
Tharoor put the blame for the logjam in Parliament on BJP and accused the saffron party of reducing the "temple of democracy to a rubber stamp for its agenda or worse, a notice board to announce its unilateral decisions".
'We take allegations of bias incredibly seriously, and want to make it clear that we denounce hate and bigotry in any form'
Twitter on Friday temporarily blocked IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad's account for alleged violation of the US Copyright Act, a move that the minister slammed as being arbitrary and gross violation of IT rules.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, headed by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, had called representatives of Facebook to hear their views "on the subject of safeguarding citizens' rights and prevention of misuse of social/online news media platforms including special emphasis on women security in the digital space," according to agenda of the meeting.
In his letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Tharoor took strong objection to Dubey's remarks on Twitter that 'the Chairman of Standing Committee does not have the authority to do anything without discussion of the agenda with its members'.
It was perhaps for the first time that any parliamentary panel deliberated on a film before it had been approved by the censor board.
The Congress claimed that Facebook has different rules for different countries and "that is not acceptable".
While the government's recent moves may have been necessary in some cases, these would have an adverse impact on the investment cycles of some of these companies. The marquee global names are suddenly finding themselves out of favour as local flavour is gaining currency in the run up to 2019 elections.
Digital campaigns compared to billboards or even print ads not only have the power to reach wider audiences but also reduce the campaign costs. The focus on social media by political parties at election time, therefore, is hardly misplaced.
The plan of UID/Aadhaar-based surveillance does not end with the collection of fingerprints and iris scan, it goes quite beyond it and poses a lethal threat to the idea of India, says Gopal Krishna.
It emerges that not only does the CIDR project fails the test of fairness, justness and reasonableness besides the test of not being fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary; it also fails the test of Arthashastra, Hadith and the Bible.
Admittedly, EVMs too have a UID number and any convergence of data can make the secret ballot system a party of history, warns Dr Gopal Krishna in the 5th part of his series against Aadhaar.
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