CHENNAI: The State government has mounted pressure on social media firms to share information sought by legal enforcement agencies (LEAs) dealing with various cyber and criminal cases. As per the report filed by the deputy secretary of the Information Technology Department before the Madras High Court, social media companies have an average compliance of only 50 per cent. For instance, Facebook has provided account information and Internet Protocol (IP) logs of only 280 people (52 per cent) as against total requests of 543 from CBCID, city police and police in the districts. When it comes to content removal requests, Facebook acted promptly in 62 per cent of cases.
A total of 1,093 requests were made, of which 683 were acknowledged. Among all, YouTube has the worst record with only four per cent cases reaching fruition. Out of 184 requests made by LEAs seeking account information and IP logs, action was taken in only eight cases, while WhatsApp is dismal when it comes to acting on content removal requests.
All 16 requests made were rejected followed by Google with 10 per cent compliance rate. On May 22, the Chief Secretary held a meeting with technocrats of social media intermediaries and with officers of LEAs, where several concerns were raised regarding traceability of original source of an objectionable post/image/video circulated in social media.
The enforcement agencies have suggested that social intermediaries have India-based nodal officer, information to be provided within the time frame of 72 hours, devising mechanism to trace the source/originator of a message, removal of objectionable content within 24 hours and devising technical mechanism/tools to identify the unlawful content across the platform and removing it altogether instead of removing only in a specified URL.
IIT-Madras professor V Kamakoti, who is assisting the High Court in the case, suggested that WhatsApp should consider including the phone number of the originator of a message, within the message, whenever a message is being forwarded, which will solve many of the problems. However, social media firms argue that in many cases the requests from LEAs do not follow the format prescribed by Ministry of Home Affairs. The bench has directed the State government to ascertain as to whether a specific format is provided by MHA.
HEARING RESUMES ON WEDNESDAY The case is coming-up for hearing again on Wednesday, when senior counsel Kapil Sibal and Arvind Datar is expected to appear for WhatsApp and Sejjan Poovayya for Twitter, PS Raman for Google and Satish Parasaran for Facebook