Twitter agrees to talk to govt, deletes six fake PMO profiles

Bowing to pressure from the Indian government to block some URLs that have been engaged in hate propaganda, leading to the creation and dissemination of morphed images, social media outlet Twitter has on Friday indicated it is agreeable to talking to the government.

“We were trying to negotiate with these people (social media outlets) to block some URLs. We have the technology to block Facebook and Google accounts based in India. But we don’t have the technology to block Twitter. Our efforts to contact them fell on deaf ears: Twitter just refused to respond. But this morning they have indicated a desire to talk to us. I don’t know what the outcome will be. But it is unfair to blame the government for being inactive in the context of what happened in Banglaore and other parts of India, leading to the exodus of people of northeastern origin,” Minister for Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, told Business Standard on Friday.

Sibal said when he raised the issue of the internet becoming a vehicle for hate propaganda a year ago, “the entire media criticised the government, saying it was an attack on the freedom of speech”. “We have no jurisdiction over servers based in foreign countries. We could have blocked Twitter completely. But then you (the media) would have been the first to create an outcry that India was curtailing the freedom of speech,” Sibal said. He said while India had laws to address acts committed by people in India, there were no laws to deal with actions via servers on foreign soil.

TWITTER TROUBLE ON WORLDWIDE WEB

• In May 2012, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority blocked access to Twitter for about 12 hours because of ‘blasphemous content’
• In January 2011, Twitter was inaccessible in Egypt during the Arab Spring protests
• In 2011, the British Prime Minister threatened to shut down Twitter in response to the civil unrest of 2011. The threat was not carried out
• In August 2010, South Korea tried to block certain content on Twitter after the North Korean govt opened a Twitter account 
• In July 2009, China had blocked access to Twitter (also Facebook and YouTube) after ethnic riots in Urumqi 
• In 2009, the Iranian government blocked Twitter because of fear of organised protests during the presidential election

“This is the problem with social media. There is no way to identify the individual behind the content. The servers are outside India. The registration is outside. The origins of the registration are unknown,” he said.

“When we ask foreign countries — most of the servers are in the US — they ask us to seek information via the mutual legal assistance treaties. This is protracted, long and painful whereas the problem has to be addressed in most cases here and now,” he said. When asked how the US dealt with the problem, Sibal said, “By making a phone call. The servers are in the US.”

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a statement that it had requested Twitter to take appropriate action against six persons impersonating the PMO profile. “When they did not reply for a long time, the government cyber security cell was requested to initiate action. Twitter has now conveyed to us that action has been taken and the reported profiles have been removed,” it said.

IT MoS Milind Deora’s Twitter account suspended
The Twitter account of none other than the Minister of State for Communication and Information Technology Milind Deora was suspended by the micro-blogging site, while a fake account with a name similar to Deora’s remained active. When his comments were sought, Deora said his account was being verified and had not been blocked.