dna special: Stung by social media, security officials seek cure from 'Oracle'

Looking for answers to stop disastrous consequences of rumours emerging from social networking websites, a team of Indian security officials left for the US on Saturday to attend a conference called by Oracle on cyber security in San Francisco.

Outrageous postings and photographs, often morphed, on social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp has thrown up a new challenge for the Indian security establishment to how to stop them before they could damage the social fabric of the country.

Having the capability to spread like jungle fire, posting on sensitive issues keeps the security agencies on the tenterhooks.

In July-August 2012, Indian government found itself at sea to quell rumours of Muslims getting killed in Myanmar and Tibet by the Buddhists with morphed images going spiral on Facebook.

Recently, in Muzaffarnagar riots too, communal forces used fake video originated in Pakistan and used it to show two Hindu boys getting beaten by Muslims, to fuel tension.

The aim of the team consisting of senior level officials from the union home ministry, ministry of external affairs and Intelligence Bureau is to look for answers on how to filter and block outrageous posts on the social web sites and stop their circulation from spreading in time.

“Our main challenge is how to get the real time data whenever such events occur on the social networking sites and to block it in time to contain the damage on the society at large. ,” an official, who is part of the team, said.  

Besides, the Indian team would also seek cyber solutions to counter threat of hacking into secure government websites.