Hyderabad: MIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Friday sharply criticised the new rules issued by the Centre to regulate social media on Thursday, saying “vague grounds” of ‘sovereignty of India’, ‘security of state’, ‘friendly relations with foreign states’ or ‘public order’ can cover all types of lawful speech.
In a series of posts on Twitter, Owaisi said: “Currently, many messaging platforms are end-to-end encrypted. No one except the sender and recipient of a message knows about its content, now govt rules want to force platforms to trace the 'originator' of forwarded messages (sic).”
He said the government was “forcing platforms to trace messages on vague grounds of ‘sovereignty/integrity of India, security of state, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order’ can cover all types of lawful speech. From news reports on @PMOIndia’s weakness on Chinese intrusions to "Modi job do", anything can be covered (sic) (by the provisions).”
Proposals to implement traceability “have been shown to be vulnerable to spoofing where bad actors can falsify originator information to frame innocents,” Owaisi noted. “Originators also have no control over who forwards the content, or how many times it is forwarded.”
Owaisi contended that the government held too many powers to surveil. “We don’t have privacy laws that protect us from a government that constantly wants to know about our private conversations. There’s no parliamentary oversight or judicial or redress against abuse of power. These rules must be opposed,” Owaisi wrote.
