Compromised again

Govt social media needs more accountability

Like many other world leaders and indeed members of the Union Cabinet, Prime Minister Narendra Modi often uses his social media feeds to make important policy announcements. Perhaps it was not completely unsurprising, therefore, that some people were taken in when the prime minister appeared to say on Twitter that Bitcoin would become legal tender in India. The government is after all in the process of framing a regulatory regime for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and it had been widely reported that he would take a call on the orientation of the final Bill. Of course, the post, which supposedly came from Mr Modi’s personal Twitter account, @narendramodi, and not the prime minister’s official account, @pmoindia, turned out to be a scam. For a short period, the account appeared to say that Bitcoin would become legal tender in India, and that the government has officially bought 500 BTC to “[distribute] them to all residents of the country”. A probably phishing link was attached. The tweet was speedily deleted, and an official statement was issued, saying that the prime minister’s account had been compromised.
 

This is not the first time that Twitter feeds of prominent leaders have been compromised, nor even is it the first time that it has been done in the service of crypto fraud. But the fact is that occasions like this have the capability to create market-moving events with significant systemic risk. The question surely must be how these social media accounts are to be secured. Whether the account was the subject of hacking or of a more complicated phishing scam in which its operators were induced to click on problematic links that compromised access to the account is not clear. Yet these are questions that should be asked in order to ensure that such occasions do not become commonplace. It might be tempting, in order to minimise the effect of compromised accounts, that policy statements are not made on Twitter or other social media. But that would not really solve the problem. It is more important to ensure that social media accounts of senior officials, both personal and official, be subject to the same standards of review, accountability, and transparency that apply to their regular forms of communication.

The expansion of social media has caught the government machinery unawares. The political leadership is of the opinion that social media helps popularise government schemes and makes information readily available. Yet this expansion of social media messaging by the government has essentially been opaque, with jobs as social-media handlers in the government being handed out to political appointees with very little oversight or accountability. This is not a sustainable state of affairs. Either social media is unimportant, or it must be treated with the due care that accompanies, for example, the drafting and dissemination of a press release by the Press Information Bureau. Clearly the government thinks social media is important, and therefore in the national interest it must regularise the management of these accounts. If it does not want to subject personal accounts to official scrutiny — for example, if personal accounts are to be run by campaign staff — then personal accounts should not be used by its team of operators to tweet about official business. That should be reserved for official accounts.