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

Facebook’s rumored smart speaker would be DOA

Image
Facebook’s rumored smart speaker would be DOA If Facebook is planning to make a smart speaker, it should really reconsider. A report in  Digitimes  today  says that  Facebook’s Building 8 research group  is developing a smart speaker with a 15-inch touch panel. There are lots of reasons to be skeptical of this:  Digitimes  has a mixed track record on tech rumors; supply chain sources can misidentify projects or describe early tests that don’t make it to market; Facebook doesn’t have a voice assistant yet; and a 15-inch screen on a speaker seems kind of ridiculous. Asked for comment, a Facebook representative said, “We don’t have anything to share at this time.” All that being said, it still seems entirely possible that Facebook would want to get in on the smart speaker game. Facebook doesn’t have a role in the smart home yet, despite having its tendrils in so many other facets of our lives. And even though Amazon has a strong early lead, th...
Read more

The Machines Are Learning To Gamble Like No Human Can

Image
The Machines Are Learning To Gamble Like No Human Can When it comes to betting, sports is all data. Since the 1970s, baseball has been revolutionized by the Society for American Baseball's (SABR) unique understanding of statistics. Now a company is attempting to utilize the vast wealth of data available in sports for gambling purposes, with an AI at the heart of its operation. Stratagem is a British company that takes bets on soccer games. Currently, it employs some 65 human experts who study matches across the globe and uses machine learning to automate parts of the process of betting, like figuring out when people like to gamble the most. But what's down the pike, founder Andreas Koukorinis tells potential investors and  The Verge , is an AI that can watch a game in real time, and, with thousands upon thousands of data points, predict who can win. "They're short duration, repeatable, with fixed rules," Koukorinis  tells   The Verge . "S...
Read more