Looks like, finally the Centre has decided to take security very
seriously and give huge push to legal bindings on social media
sites. It will now begin forcing social sites to have servers
in India, reveals a DNA report.
The reason is simple, in
case of information leak or hack, it gets difficult in investigating the case
if the servers are hosted outside India. Moreover, Indian laws cannot be
applied on those agencies.
Citing top government
sources, the report reveals that a meeting will be soon held with leading
social media websites – Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Flickr, asking them to
bring their servers in India.
This will also help keep
a tab on the malicious content. The concern about how to deal with malicious
content was first raised by former NSA Shivshankar Menon in a meeting on August
27, 2012, adds the report.
However, this decision
is the outcome of a meeting held late last year by the officials of union home
ministry and other stakeholders – DEITY (department of electronics and
information technology) and law and justice ministry, and worked out the legal
provisions that will enforce social sites to have their servers here.
“The new media wing that
has been specially set up by the Information and Broadcasting ministry
continuously co-ordinates with the union home ministry by sending the contents
trending on the social media web sites but often it has a time lag that is
enough to make the content go viral,” sources told the news site. The Centre
has also asked state governments to have IG level nodal officers, who will coordinate
with the Centre and ensure strict action against malicious content.
Recently, citing similar security concerns, the Maharashtra
government announced to be working on their own version of WhatsApp. With its own messaging
service, it will ensure that officials communicate and share information
securely as the app will be hosted on government servers.
The Centre is also
believed to be planning to ban the use of private email services for official
communication in order to protect sensitive data. Instead of private email ids
like .com, .org or .org.in, it expects officials to use government websites
with domain names like .nic.in or .gov.in.
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