An illustration picture shows a man starting his Twitter App on a mobile device
A recommendation was made to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today for bringing foreign content-providers like Facebook and Twitter under Indian laws as is the case in several other countries.
This was conveyed by Director of Intelligence Bureau, Asif Ibrahim, on the concluding day of the annual conference of Directors General and Inspectors General of Police in his address to welcome the Prime Minister.
Outlining the deliberations in the last two days, Mr Ibrahim said there was a special discussion on the vulnerabilities and steps needed to be taken in order to overcome the challenges in cyber space which include constant upgradation of technology through in-house efforts.
He said recent communal incidents had highlighted how social media was being used to instigate people and "it was observed that while security agencies in India were handicapped with technical and procedural constraints, foreign law enforcement agencies have unfettered access to social media."
"The legal framework in India in this context is still evolving. It was recommended that foreign content providers be brought within the ambit of Indian laws supplemented with creation of our own cyber space", he said.
When contacted, Director General of Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-IN) Gulshan Rai said foreign content providers were social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and this recommendation, if accepted, would make all these websites answerable to Indian law, he said.
The chief of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) told the Prime Minister that that the decision to introduce non-lethal weapons for police while dealing with public agitation had yielded rich dividends.
"As a result of this, only three people lost their lives in the aftermath of hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru in Jammu and Kashmir this year as compared to 113 in 2010 public agitation," he said.
In Jammu and Kashmir, despite concerted efforts to destabilise the state, effective coordination between security agencies have frustrated these moves, the IB chief said.
However, elements within Lashker-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen had targeted security forces in order to provoke disproportionate response from security forces and later convert it into agitations, he added.
"Even the efforts for agitations by separatists have found no takers and people in the state have reposed their faith in the mainstream political process and results of forthcoming elections have become the focus of daily discourse," the IB Chief said.