Scroll.in: New Delhi: Friday, August 03, 2018.
The Union
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has said that it does not have records
of specific correspondence within the government on the basis of which it took
a decision to float a tender to create a social media monitoring tool that will
create digital profiles of citizens, ostensibly to gauge their opinions about
official policies.
It said this
in response to a right to information application.
The ministry
said that the tender was floated as part of one of its approved schemes on
media infrastructure, even through the original documents of the scheme do not
mention the launch of such a tool.
The plea,
filed with the ministry on May 30 by Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human
Rights Initiative, had asked specifically for correspondence, file notings and
other official documents on the basis of which the ministry took the decision
to float the tender regarding this proposal. The petitioner had also asked for
copies of the email correspondence regarding the tender between the ministry
and the public sector unit that floated the bid.
The ministry,
headed by Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, provided neither.
Scroll.in had
first reported in May that the Union government wanted to monitor historical
conversations of social media users, including their emails, create their “360
degree” profiles and target them with personalised messages to promote positive
opinions and to neutralise negative sentiments about government schemes.
On April 25,
the information and broadcasting ministry had floated a tender, through its
public sector unit Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited, to hire an
agency to create the tool.
On July 11,
while hearing a public interest litigation that challenged the ministry’s move,
the Supreme Court said that such monitoring of social media by the government
would be like creating a “surveillance state”.
The
information and broadcasting ministry tender did not specify if the government
would take the consent of the social media users before monitoring or using
their data. It was also not clear from the documents what measures would the
government take to prevent the misuse of such data.
SC hearing
coming up
According to
government rules, any tender by a government body is floated only after
approval from its top authorities. The records of all correspondence for such
approval are maintained in the form of file notings.
The ministry
did not respond to Nayak’s Right to Information application within the
mandatory 30-days period, as required by the law. It issued a response only
after he filed an appeal. “Floating of RFP [Request for Proposal or Tender] is
being done by BECIL [Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited] on the
basis of approved MIDP [Media Infrastructure Development Programme] scheme of
the ministry. The documents relating to MIDP is available on the website of
this ministry,” the ministry’s response said.
But the
document related to the Media Infrastructure Development Programme that is
available online does not talk about any such monitoring of social media users.
About the
email correspondence with Broadcast Engineering Consultants India, the ministry
said “no such record is available”.
The ministry
also said it was yet to sign a formal agreement regarding a project on social
media listed among the ongoing projects on the Broadcast Engineering
Consultants India website. Scroll.in could not independently confirm if the
tender for social media monitoring was part of the same project.
On August 3,
the Supreme Court will hear the petition that has challenged the proposed
social media monitoring project on grounds of violation of privacy.
India does
not yet have a law to ensure data protection or to define the process of
obtaining consent from individuals before using their data. A
government-appointed committee made recommendations on July 27, which some
legal experts decried as a blow to the idea of consent and the right to
privacy.
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