Expressing concern over the increasing number of countries, including India, pitching to make it mandatory for organisations to store certain user data locally, Colin Crowell, global vice president for public policy at Twitter said the company’s decision on additional infrastructure will be driven by economic rationale.
There are other ways to resolve concerns over access to user information by “appropriate authorities for appropriate reasons”, he pointed out. The U.S.-based micro-blogging platform also believes that the new draft rules to check misinformation on social media should be “carefully calibrated” as there is a need to strike a balance between issues related to safety and security and important values such as free expression and individual civil liberties.
To a question on the proposed data localisation norms, Mr. Crowell said, “Twitter is perhaps different from some other media platforms that might be household names in the sense that although the brand is well known and easily recognised around the world from a corporate perspective, we are much smaller than what people perhaps appreciate.”
He added that the Twitter global network is run out of two server facilities in the U.S. “A proliferation of countries asking us to put those types of infrastructure facilities, of course, will be a significant change for us and we like to make those decisions based on economic rationale,” he said.
User information
Mr. Crowell stated that one of the concerns driving data localisation is access to user information by “appropriate authorities for appropriate reasons” and Twitter believes there are other ways to achieve sensible goals in that area that don’t require investments in infrastructure.
“…Recently, in the United States, legislation called the CLOUD (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data) Act [was passed] that essentially was a reform to which was referred to as the MLAT process which is the way... again Twitter didn’t invent this... Governments negotiate this as a treaty ... how does one country obtain information about citizens of another country perhaps and what are the norms for that?. So, this is a larger conversation there. But, we would be concerned about any data localisation proposals,” he said.
Talking about the recent suggestion to amend the Information Technology Act to make it mandatory for platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter to trace “originator” of “unlawful” information, while also removing such content within 24 hours after being notified, Mr. Crowell said, “…we are eager to engage with government authorities in a conversation about the development of any new rules or regulations in this area and with civil society as part of the robust consultation process because these are issues which don’t solely impact high tech companies. How these balances are stuck can impact individual rights of people in India with respect to how they are free to express themselves on the Internet.
Striking right balance
“With respect to the individual proposals, obviously we would like to see some refinements. These types of proposals need to be carefully calibrated…engaging with industry and civil society is part of robust public consultation I think, hopefully, will help us yield a result that works to strike the right balance.”
On tracing the origin of a message, Mr. Crowell said while the company will need to look at the actual technical language of the rules, often time it might not be apparent to Twitter where the originator is. “We are not an infrastructure company, we are a web-based company and our traffic comes to us from variety of different sources and that traffic may come, for example, through VPNs and proxies. Sometimes that conversation is less with us and more with other participants in the telecommunications sector.”
Asked about the government expressing dissatisfaction on Twitter’s compliance on requests to remove objectionable content, he said, “We are a global platform and we get reports from variety of sources. Sometimes reports we get may not be validly or properly scoped legally. Sometimes there may be lack of clarity around what is it that they are actually seeking to address. Depending on the country and context, they are also important values around free expression that we also try to uphold.
“We don’t respond favourably to every request that we get for a variety of reasons. That is not unique to India. It’s the same in U.S. where Twitter is headquartered.” These are part of the on going conversations that we have with governments everywhere.”
“We understand that there are rights and responsibilities and we have open channels of communication with governmental authorities here. I think we have a very healthy back and forth,” he added.
