Day 91 – Q 5.The giants in the field of internet and social media like Google, Amazon, Facebook etc are based out of India. How does it pose a security threat to India?

5. The giants in the field of internet and social media like Google, Amazon, Facebook etc are based out of India. How does it pose a security threat to India? 

इंटरनेट और सोशल मीडिया जैसे Google, Amazon, Facebook आदि के क्षेत्र में दिग्गज भारत से बाहर आधारित हैं। यह भारत के लिए सुरक्षा खतरा कैसे पैदा करता है?

Introduction:

Social media has emerged as one of the national security concern in India during Assam riots and mass exodus of northeast Indian from major Indian cities to the recent violent student protests and mob lynching incidents in India. It has been observed that foreign base of internet and social media giants pose challenge to efficient monitoring and deterrence against security threats to India.     

Body:

India has faced many security issues with the use of Social Media in recent past like rioting, lynching, recruitment for terror organization and radicalization by fundamental group. 

Security threats due to out of India Internet and Social Media giants:

• Indian laws are ill-equipped to deal with social media giants due to their location. At most India can only censure the giants and ask cooperation, taking hasty steps to ban such multinationals like China way will dent India’s image as vibrant democracy and liberal economy.   
• India neither has technology infrastructure nor sufficient able manpower to categories private, sensitive data of Indians and control outward flow. 
• Indian data highways are outward directed due to exponential increase of social media use with more than one billion mobile phones and increasing digital inclusion create threat of profiling Indian citizen data for various purposes like economic and social behavior of India by foreign country.
• Major Complicating Factors to secure the networks and Media Much of the hardware and software that make up the communications ecosystem is sourced externally.
• End to End encryption used in phones to send and receive messages, restricts the government’s ability to monitor and increases the threat of terrorism and crimes of trafficking, smuggling. 
• Open source intelligence creation for foreign intelligence networks with optimal processing.  

However, India has taken various measures to increase surveillance and monitoring such as – National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) of India. It has also appointed BN Srikrishna Committee to review data protection in India. 

Need to follow principle of Data Localization:

• As per BN Srikrishna committee recommendation, Personal data will need to be stored on servers located within India, and transfers outside the country will need to be subject to safeguards. Critical personal data, however, will only be processed in India.
• Cross border transfer of data must be subject to model contract clauses on the lines of General Data Protection Regulation of EU. 

Conclusion:

There is need to increase digital literacy of Indians and increase awareness about potential threats posed by cyber security to both individual and nation as a whole. India should focus its energy on development of critical technologies to monitor data flow and become pioneer in new technology development with economic capacity to establish its own social media and internet giants.