Data privacy: Union govt yet to confront Facebook, panel told

NEW DELHI: National cyber security chief Gulshan Rai told a parliamentary panel this week that India hasn’t made “concerted efforts to confront” the management of popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Whatsapp amid growing fears of misuse of user data.

Rai said this at a meeting of the parliamentary standing committee on information technology, which discussed privacy issues and data breach in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The panel, headed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parliamentarian Anurag Thakur, wanted to know if Facebook can be summoned and held accountable for any data breach of Indian users.

“The question is whether we can enforce legal provisions. I think we can. Top management is located somewhere. What matters is how to enforce our own legal provisions,” Rai said.

When Thakur asked Rai if the government can restrict exposure of personal data on social media platforms, Rai said: “We have also not made concerted efforts till now to confront these managements. We are moving in the direction, and we expect to resolve it considering the size of the market.

“We have sufficient clout,” he added.

The panel expressed concern about whether Indian users are adequately protected by the terms of service agreements.