Monitoring of social media irks top court

Tracking and regulating social media content will transform us into a surveillance state, judge says

Agovernment plan to monitor social media could turn India into a “surveillance state”, the Supreme Court was cited as saying yesterday as it asked the government to respond to such worries within two weeks, a lawyer involved in the case said.

The government wants social media users monitored and fake news identified and the Information and Broadcasting Ministry in April invited bids from companies to do that.

But a member of parliament challenged the plan, following which a threejudge bench of the Supreme Court began hearing the matter.

“Tracking and regulating social media content will transform us into a surveillance state,” one of the three judges observed, according to the petitioner’s lawyer, who declined to be identified.

The Indian media also reported that the Supreme Court raised concerns about the plan to track social media.

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry did not As Twitter began sanitising its platform by removing inactive and locked accounts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday lost nearly 300,000 followers, while Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi lost over 17,000 followers.

The number of Modi’s followers went down to 43.1 million from 43.4 million. According to SocialBlade. com that tracks the number of Twitter followers on a daily basis, Modi’s personal Twitter handle (@narendramodi) lost 284,746 followers.

The official handle (@ PMOIndia) lost 140,635 followers.

Rahul Gandhi has lost 17,503 followers while Congress leader Shashi Tharoor lost 151,509 followers. immediately respond to a request for comment.

Highlighting the danger of so-called fake news in India, a series of hoaxes posted on social media has led to a spate of lynchings recently.

Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp messaging platform on Tuesday published advertisements in Indian newspapers aimed at tackling the spread of misinformation.