Chennai: Social media has turned out to be a big villain for government officials. In the last two months alone, four incidents involving various government departments created a stir among police, PWD, and a district collectorate. Video and audio tapes of alleged errant and corrupt practices of officials continue to do the rounds in WhatsApp. An anonymous videotape dragging the name of a district collector was in circulation late Friday night in which a caller alleged that he had bribed a top brass of a district administration.
The conversation ends with the other voice abusing the caller. On Saturday, a group, Law Foundation India, based in Coimbatore, circulated the names of 10 corrupt officials in state tra-nsport corporations through WhatsApp. But the contact numbers given by the group mostly remained not reachable despite levelling serious allegations.
“Most of the time, vested interests misuse social media applications and often publish unauthenticated facts. Under the pretext of freedom of expression, people often misuse the social media sites and this is a dangerous trend,” said Primepoint K. Srinivasan, co-founder and past president of Cyber Society of India. Several legal experts have already opined that the recent quashing of Section 66A of Information Technology Act by the Supreme Court was an “unfortunate verdict” as this had prevents police from proceeding against those who misused social media ”, said advocate V. Rajendran, who specializes in cyber crime cases.
The court correctly observed that the provision was misused by policemen in a few states by arresting innocent persons for posting web comments on political issues, but quashing the entire provision has now made police inactive in the issue. The provision should be in place to prevent misuse of social media which are public platforms, where personal data should not be posted, the advocate adds. Those affected by such WhatsApp leaks may lodge a complaint or file defamation suit, a cop said.
