India's Supreme Court calls for strict guidelines amid concerns over social media abuse

The picture accompanying the historical article has expired The Supreme Court expressed concern over the source and spread of false information on social media platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook, and asked the Aadhar Management Center to come up with protection within three weeks"National Sovereignty, Personal Privacy and Prevention of Illegal Activities"suggestions. "The originators of fake news must be traced. At the same time, national sovereignty and personal privacy must be maintained. Neither we nor the High Court can make a ruling. At this time, the government needs to formulate policies to deal with it." A two-judge bench headed by Justice Deepak Gupta said today. Three days ago, they asked the government to explain whether it would consider linking social media profiles to individuals' Aadhaar accounts, India's national identity authentication system and the world's largest biometric ID database. The court has made it clear that in the present case, the issue is not the connection of Aadhar and social media profiles but tracing the original senders of fake news and information that led to mob attacks and killings. "The direction technology is heading is dangerous. After the last hearing, I looked into it and found out I could buy an Ak-47 on the dark web within 30 minutes," Justice Gupta said. "I'm trying to persuade my friends to give up their smartphones." "The country is wise enough that if there is encryption technology, there must be decryption technology too," the Supreme Court said, again warning the Center about the need to strike a balance. On the issue of platforms linking social media profiles with Aadhaar, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the government is still studying the matter and has not taken a decision yet. Lawyers for Facebook and WhatsApp responded: It is extremely possible to identify the sender of the message in the foreground. India's Supreme Court is dealing with a petition filed by Facebook and WhatsApp seeking transfer of an Aadhaar-related case that is currently pending in the Madras, Bombay and Madhya Pradesh High Courts; They argued that any decision made in these cases would have national security implications and therefore should be decided by the Supreme Court. The Tamil Nadu government opposed the transfer of the case, claiming that Facebook was not compliant with Indian law and made it difficult to "detect the crime". State Attorney General KK Venugopal said: "When the police investigate criminal or terror cases, they cannot find who forwarded the messages. Multinational companies (referring to Facebook and WhatsApp) do not want the High Court to rule. WhatsApp was also censored by India's home ministry last year in a bid to prevent communications between terrorists, especially those targeted by insurgents such as Jammu and Kashmir.  “WhatsApp (calls and messages) has now become the communication medium of choice for anti-state forces and we now don’t know how to keep an eye on it. We need a policy where these apps will be forced to share information with security agencies when it comes to national security. The Center had earlier said it could take legal action after WhatsApp - which prides itself on being a fully encrypted messaging app - refused to trace the original sender of the message.