The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology headed by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has on Friday summoned top executives of social media giant Twitter and officials of the Indian Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) on the issue of security and data privacy. citizens.
The meeting will be held a day after the Supreme Court said the technical panel appointed by it to investigate the unauthorized use of Pegasus found some malware in five mobile phones out of 29 examined but could not conclude it was due to spyware. Israeli.
The parliamentary panel is being held amid reports that a former head of security at the social media company has filed complaints with US officials alleging the company misled regulators about its cybersecurity protections and its problems with fake accounts. .
Twitter, however, said it was a false narrative and the allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to draw attention and cause harm to the company, its customers and shareholders.
Several media reports claimed that former Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko has also alleged that Twitter knowingly allowed the Indian government to place its agents on the company’s payroll where they had “direct unsupervised access to systems company and user data”.
On Wednesday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi hit out at the Center over the issue. Tagging a related report, he tweeted, “Snooping, intimidation and theft are the foundations of PM’s promised ‘Amritkaal’.”
The panel has held meetings with various stakeholders, including technology companies, social media firms, ministries and other regulators on the issue of security and privacy of citizens’ data.
Allegations against IRCTC
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 monetize its passenger and freight customer data to generate revenue. until ₹1000 crores.
News agency PTI, citing sources in the panel, reported that the issue will be discussed in the meeting with IRCTC officials.
According to the IRCTC tender document, the data to be studied will include information captured by the carrier’s various public applications such as “name, age, mobile number, gender, address, email ID, class of travel, payment method, log in or password” and other details.
A senior official at IRCTC claimed that the media reports were totally fictitious and that the company does not sell its data and has no intention of doing such things.
The official also said that 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, the check goes to the respective payment gateway or bank for payment.
(With data from PTI, ANI)
