No Roadmap to Check Objectionable Content on WhatsApp, Admits Government Indo-Asian News Service, 28 July 2017

No Roadmap to Check Objectionable Content on WhatsApp, Admits Government

 
Indo-Asian News Service, 28 July 2017

No Roadmap to Check Objectionable Content on WhatsApp, Admits Government

HIGHLIGHTS

The government on Friday virtually expressed its helplessness about checking objectionable content uploaded on online messaging site WhatsApp as they are encrypted end-to-end and no third party can access them.
The government can take action once the content is reported as it has laws in place, Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told Congress member Raj Babbar in the Rajya Sabha in reply to a question.
The member had asked whether the government has any plan to stop sharing of objectionable videos through mobiles and WhatsApp.
In the answer, Prasad cited laws that deal with offences of publishing or transmitting objectionable contents. He admitted that instances of objectionable videos being uploaded through mobile phones and shared through WhatsApp have been noticed but added that messages are end-to-end encryptedand cannot be seen by a third party.
"Instances of objectionable videos being uploaded through mobile phones and shared through WhatsApp have been noticed. According to WhatsApp, the messages are end-to-end encrypted and they and any third party cannot read them. In other words, the messages are only seen by the sender and the receiver," he said in the reply.
"WhatsApp provides a feature to report any objectionable content. However, they also admit that since they do not have the contents of the messages available with them, it limits their ability to take action. A user can take screenshot of the content and share it with appropriate law enforcement authorities," he added.
The Minister further said that the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, as amended in 2008, provides for punishment for publishing or transmitting objectionable contents including sexually explicit and obscene material.
"Concerned law enforcement agencies take necessary action for violation noticed or reported as per the law," he said.
There have been instances of anti-social elements using WhatsApp to fan communal passions in the recent past.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

50 Smartphone Blogs to Watch

Image
50 Smartphone Blogs to Watch There's quite a collection of good and colorful blogs that track iPhones, Android devices, BlackBerries and other  smartphones  and no shortage of overlapping coverage among them (How many different "scoops" on the  Android-powered Motorola Devour phone did I come across today?). Some are written by professional reporters, others by unapologetic geeks and others by thinly-veiled marketers. Here's a spin through 50 of these  mobile phone  blogs, excluding more general gadget sites and including a few from my employer, IDG General Smartphones BGR (Boy Genius Report) : The mysterious Boy Genius and friends blog about mobile gadgets from Apple, RIM and others, and more often than not, are the first ones out with the information. Blog posts cover everything from the latest device rumors to straight financial news. One sign that this is a go-to site: The hundreds of comments posted by readers on the site's blog entries. C...
Read more

Oops! Multi-Million-Dollar Missile Test Failed Because a Sailor Pushed the Wrong Button

Image
Oops! Multi-Million-Dollar Missile Test Failed Because a Sailor Pushed the Wrong Button Last month an expensive test of a system designed to shoot down North Korean ballistic missiles failed. Now we know that failure was because of human error, according to a report by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. The test was the second involving the latest version of the SM-3 interceptor, a key platform in America's missile defenses.  It  took place  off the coast of Hawaii at the Pacific Missile Range Facility on June 21 , 2017 at 1:20 AM Eastern . The destroyer USS  John Paul Jones— equipped with the SM-3 Block IIA ballistic missile interceptor, AM/SPY-1 radar, and version 9.C2 of the Aegis Combat System—was supposed to shoot down an incoming simulated ballistic missile. Human error got in the way.  According to  Defense News , a tactical datalink controller accidentally marked the incoming missile as friendly, causing the SM-3 missile to self-dest...
Read more

With new Porsche Panamera, E-Hybrid means massive power

With new Porsche Panamera, E-Hybrid means massive power The 911 pace car ahead of me raced up the main straight and took the ascent up through Turn 1 of the Vancouver Island Motorsport Circuit without a flash of brakelights. Behind the wheel of the 2018 Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid, I tried to close the distance. My car weighed a lot more but it also boasted substantially more power. The pace car's brakes went on hard before Turn 2, a strategy I emulated. The very tight corners on this tiny track gave the smaller 911 a natural advantage. To close the distance, I quickly learned that, to access the Panamera's 680 horsepower I needed to really put the pedal down, as the throttle felt modulated for smooth on-road driving. On the third of a succession of turns, I steered too tight and the Panamera's rear end began to wag. It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't devastating, either. Under Porsche's direction, I was driving with the Panamera's Porsche Stabili...
Read more