A recommendation was made to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday for bringing foreign content providers like Facebook and Twitter under Indian laws, like in other countries.
This was conveyed by Director Intelligence Bureau Asif Ibrahim, on the concluding day of the annual conference of Directors General and Inspectors General of Police, in his address to welcome the Prime Minister.
He said the recent communal incidents had brought out that social media platform was being used for instigation of crowds and “it was observed that while security agencies in India were handicapped with technical and procedural constraints, foreign law enforcement agencies have unfettered access to social media.”
“The legal framework in India in this context is still evolving. It was recommended that foreign content providers be brought within the ambit of Indian laws supplemented with creation of our own cyber space”, he said.
When contacted, Director General of Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-IN) Gulshan Rai said social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter were foreign content providers and this recommendation, if accepted, will make all these websites answerable to Indian law, he said.
