NEW DELHI: Twitter withheld an unspecified amount of accounts in India in response to a “legal request”, and then restored them around 9pm on Monday. The stories included those from the news magazine Caravan, Kisan Ekta Morcha (Samyukt Kisan Morcha’s computer cell), tribal leader Hansraj Meena and actor Sushant Singh, all committed to the ongoing farmer protests.
The ANI news agency citing “sources” reported that the Ministry of Electronics and Information (MEITY) had asked Twitter to block around 250 tweets / Twitter accounts that used a hashtag that was “false, intimidating and provocative” by virtue of of section 69A of the IT Act. . MEITY had acted in a request from the Union Interior Ministry and law enforcement agencies, who called for the suspension to “avoid any escalation of law and order in view of the ongoing protests,” the news agency added.
Delhi police sources confirmed that his cyber cell had flagged around 250 accounts. “The flagged accounts were selling fake news, causing discord, upsetting the public peace and posting old content without clarification from the police,” said a police officer. He added that authorities would continue to monitor social media to detect any such activity.
According to Twitter, the company had received a valid legal request from MEITY to suspend some accounts. But he held other meetings with government officials and conveyed that the accounts and tweets in question constitute freedom of expression and are newsworthy. The company then “retired” the accounts to protect the public conversation.
Other retained accounts included those of CPM politician Mohd Salim, agricultural organization BKU Ekta Ugrahan and Tractor2Twitter (operated by some professionals led by IT professional who returned to Sydney, Bhavjit Singh). “It shows that Twitter is acting on instructions from the central government to stop the flow of information to the outside world. It seems that the government is planning a major crackdown, as the suspension of such a large number of Twitter accounts points to this, ”Bhavjit had told TOI before the account was restored.
TOI checked the hashtag mentioned as “provocative”. Many other identifiers that they had Tweeted using the trend were still working on the platform, raising questions about why the company took action against only a handful of identifiers.
Several politicians and activists had criticized Twitter for its arbitrary decision. Among them were Derek O’Brien of TMC, Congressional Speaker Randeep Singh Surjewala, Tejashwi Yadav of RJD and Supreme Court attorney Prashant Bhushan.
The digital rights group, the Internet Freedom Foundation, also criticized the opacity of section 69A, which allows the government to prevent social media companies from releasing information about why an account was suspended. “(Section 69A) continues to allow secret censorship by the executive branch without any independent judicial scrutiny,” the IFF posted on Twitter.
Earlier, in a statement, Twitter said: “Many countries have laws that may apply to tweets and / or content on Twitter accounts. In our ongoing effort to make our services available to people everywhere, if we receive a request with the appropriate scope from an authorized entity, it may be necessary to withhold access to certain content in a particular country from time to time. “.
According to Twitter, it notifies affected account holders of its decision to retain accounts “unless we are prohibited from doing so, for example if we receive a sealed court order.”
(Tickets by Neel Kamal in Bathinda and Sakshi Chand in Delhi)
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