India: Government wants to monitor social networking websites

By Sara Yasin / 10 August 2011

India’s Department of Telecommunications has been asked to monitor Twitter and Facebook, because of fears that the sites are being used to plan terrorist attacks. In April, the Indian Information Technology (IT) Act of 2008 was amended, giving officials the ability to monitor web activity. It also provides officials with access to private information, including passwords, without a court order. However, Facebook and Twitter do not release the information of their users without a court order. This coincides with India’s threat to outlaw the usage of Blackberry devices, because of Research in Motion’s refusal to comply with demands to lower the level of encryption of messages.