BENGALURU: “Think twice before you post or share any post on social media. It may land you in prison,” warn the police. Be it a personal, derogatory post about someone or rumour mongers, the Bengaluru police claim to be prepared to take on trouble-makers misusing sites like Facebook and Twitter, even if the posts are deleted.
Apart from a dedicated social media cell functioning 24x7, they have software that could not just come to their aid in specific cases but also keep track of general trends. The software can sift through posts looking for key words.
“For example, during the Cauvery water dispute, we could analyse videos and photos that had been posted to identify people who were fuelling the fire,” said an officer in the social media wing. The tool enables the police to, among other things, use key words to identify accounts from which mischief-makers are posting content to social media sites.
M. Hemant Nimbalkar, IGP, Economic Offences Wing, CID said the police are, in fact, using multiple tools for this purpose.
Though there are no valid estimates for India, Paul Antony from Bengaluru-based Synergia Foundation pointed out that a study had established that law enforcement agencies in the USA had spent around $4.75 million on social media monitoring tools between 2013 and 2016.
Are they effective?
“Most miscreants use proxy servers or Virtual Private Network (VPN). Their IP addresses are traced to foreign countries. We don't have treaties with foreign countries to jointly combat cyber crimes,” said Mirza Faizan Asad, Legal Head, Global Cyber Security Response Team.
But even in cases that are less complicated, not enough is being done, he alleged. “The tools the police claim to use are not enough. They need to be pro-active the moment a complaint reaches them rather than sending victims from one police station to another citing jurisdiction. They need to register an FIR from any police station and start investigation. Any delay helps the culprit will delete evidence online. The only tool they have is to send an email to the person concerned in Facebook or Twitter to get the IP address.”
One example is the case of 24-year-old Vinitha (name changed), a private firm employee, who is dealing with harassment on social media from a man she was formerly in a relationship with. After an informal warning from the police in her hometown in coastal Karnataka failed to put an end to the harassment, she decided to register a complaint with the Bengaluru police on October 21 this year.
“I wanted to report the harassment to the site first. But they require 25 users to report the profile before it can be blocked. But we realised that he can always create a new profile,” she added.
The police registered an FIR using IPC Section 354 D (any man who monitors the use by a woman of the internet, email or any other form of electronic communication, commits the offence of stalking). “We will be including sections of the IT Act as well,” a senior officer investigating the case said.
The challenges
However, the police admitted that getting data from the cyber police alone takes no less than 45 days. “They have to get information from the social networking sites, which takes time,” said an officer.
Mr. Antony also said social media evidence can be admitted, but not always. “The ease with which e-evidence can be fabricated or falsified creates a hurdle to admissibility not faced with the other evidence. Hence, a conviction based on social media evidence remains a challenge also because the question of breaking the privacy law remains ambiguous,” he said.
A breach of privacy
Bengaluru: Discussions about rising cases of cyber crime as well as the abysmally low conviction rate have been accompanied by questions regarding privacy. However, M. Hemant Nimbalkar, IGP, Economic Offences Wing, CID said once someone publishes a post, it is deemed public.
“Once a post is published on a particular platform, it is public. There is no question of intrusion. No one is hacking into any account,” he said, adding that anything that is seen as being detrimental to ‘public order or national interest’ will be taken up.
Cyber experts appear to agree. “If any data which is publicly available and which causes harm to the public, law and order, they are tracked or spied on by the police only to prevent danger to the citizens. By doing this, they are not committing any crime and they have the right to surveillance,” said Mirza Faizan Asad, Legal Head, Global Cyber Security Response Team.
Complaint mechanism
With presence on three popular social media and internet messaging platforms, Bengaluru police have collectively garnered nearly 30 lakh followers on Twitter and Facebook. These two, along with WhatsApp, have been pitched as a quick response mechanism not only for resolving complaints, but also for dissemination of information.
Sources in the social media cell said these alternatives to conventional complaint filing system had paved way for immediate redressal of issues in some cases. “We get all kinds of complaints, mainly traffic related, especially from areas such as Whitefield and K.R. Puram. The others relate to noise pollution and sexual abuse,” said a source.
Is WhatsApp better?
The recent introduction of the police’s own WhatsApp account is said to have dented the popularity of Twitter to an extent. “Not everyone has a Twitter account, but almost everyone who has a smartphone is on WhatsApp,” pointed out an officer of the social media cell.
However, Facebook and Twitter continue to be more useful for the sheer number of people that they allow the cops to reach out to. In addition, WhatsApp has the occasional unrelated messages, including ‘good morning’ messages and forwards, which the admin has to deal with.
