Circulating derogatory messages on celebrities and communities may land you in jail
Think twice before forwarding derogatory jokes, videos or morphed images of celebrities or politicians from your cellphone. You might be arrested for the same.
The Pune police have recently received complaints of people using group messaging services like WhatsApp to forward derogatory jokes about communities and celebrities. According to the police, the person can be arrested for the act, unless he/ she is able to prove the chain of receiving the message themselves.
Speaking to dna, deputy commissioner of police (cyber) Sanjay Shinde said, “Nowadays, people are using cellphone applications effectively for their communications. We have observed that derogatory jokes, videos or morphed images of celebrities or politicians are being shared among friends. If someone takes objection about video, jokes or morphed images, a case can be filed against last sender.” Assistant police inspector Dr Sanjay Tungar of Cyber Crime Cell (CCC) said, “Complaint will be registered under relevant sections of Information Technology Act.”
In a recent case, Whatsapp application was used for wrong purpose by some people in Pimpri-Chinchwad where a derogatory message against a particular community’s leader was circulated. Shinde said, “We have received two cases where people have circulated objectionable content in the city.”
When criminals say Whatsapp, police have little clue!
It seems that affordable messaging applications like WhatsApp, We Chat and others are making it difficult for the Pune police to track the criminals.
Most of the criminals are using these applications to share messages to evade Call Data Record (CDR) monitoring. The conversations on these applications are not monitored by any agency. Pune crime branch and Cyber Crime Cell officers said that the trend is observed among criminals since the past couple of months.
A senior crime branch officer said, “In the recent dacoity case, the arrested suspects used apps like WhatsApp and We Chat to convey messages to their associates. When it comes to text messaging, we can establish a link that two people have sent SMS to each other. But in such applications, once you delete the chat history, the data is irretrievable.”
Cyber expert Niranjan Reddy said, “Applications like WhatsApp, Viber, etc. are internet-based. The conversations of these applications cannot be monitored by any agency..”
According to the cop, government and security agencies need to understand such applications as more people are using it these days.
“Whenever the chat history is deleted from the cellphone, it goes to a certain part of the phone’s memory. However, the content in this memory is overwritten as more data is moved to this section,” said Reddy. An officer said, “The only way to intercept or monitor content being exchanged through these applications is by invoking Section 69 of the Information Technology Act. However, there are detailed criteria for agencies to be able to do that.”
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