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Twitter, IRCTC summoned by parliament panel over data privacy today
The parliamentary panel is being held in the backdrop of reports that a former head of security at the social media company has filed complaints with US officials alleging that the company misled regulators about its cybersecurity defences and its problems with fake accounts.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on information technology chaired by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has summoned top executives of social media giant Twitter and officials of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) on Friday on the issue of citizens' data security and privacy.
The meeting will be held a day after the Supreme Court said the technical panel appointed by it to probe the unauthorised use of Pegasus has found some malware in five mobile phones out of the 29 examined but it could not be concluded that it was due to the Israeli spyware.
The parliamentary panel is being held in the backdrop of reports that a former head of security at the social media company has filed complaints with US officials alleging that the company misled regulators about its cybersecurity defences and its problems with fake accounts.
Twitter, however, said it was a false narrative and the allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on the company, its customers and its shareholders.
Several media reports claimed that former head of security at Twitter Peiter Zatko has also alleged that Twitter knowingly allowed the Indian government to place its agents on the company payroll where they had “direct unsupervised access to the company's systems and user data”.
On Wednesday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi hit out at the Centre over the issue. Tagging a related report, he tweeted, "Snooping, threatening and stealing are the foundations of the 'Amritkaal' promised by the PM."
The panel has been holding meetings with various stakeholders, including tech companies, social media firms, ministries and other regulators on the issue of citizens' data security and privacy.
Allegations against IRCTC
The IRCTC, which has more than 10 crore users, of which 7.5 crore are active users, has floated a tender to hire a consultant to monetise its passenger and freight customer data to generate revenue up to ₹1,000 crore.
News agency PTI, citing sources in the panel, reported that the issue will be taken up for discussion in the meeting with the IRCTC officials.
According to the IRCTC tender document, the data to be studied will include information captured by the transporter's various public-facing applications such as “name, age, mobile number, gender, address, e-mail ID, class of journey, payment mode, log in or password” and other details.
A senior official at the IRCTC claimed that the media reports were totally fictitious and that the company does not sell its data and there is no intention to do such things.
The official also said the IRCTC does not store any financial data of its customers on its system server, as at the time of online payment for its various services, control is passed on to the respective Payment Gateway or bank for the payment.
(With inputs from PTI, ANI)
