The comments made on Facebook by a college student in Palghar and her subsequent arrest under the Information Technology Act have been the subject of much discussion in the media and is now being debated in the Supreme Court.
This unfortunate incident has helped to focus needed attention on the misuse of the vaguely worded penal consequences in the Act.
There are several other, less dramatic, ways in which some other laws are being misused, in conjunction with the rise in use of social media. While the impact is much less dramatic than the midnight arrest of the student, the implications are grave enough for these to be debated in public fora.
Let me narrate the experience of my friend, Hema. She lives in a secure gated community in Pune. Recently, the security guard escorted two gentlemen to her door one afternoon. They asked her the contact details of her mother. She was taken aback by this rather unexpected request from strangers.
On questioning, they revealed themselves as belonging to a collection agency. They wanted to talk to her mother who had defaulted on a few thousand rupees on a credit card issued by a bank they claimed to represent. They knew Hema’s mother did not live with her but were “requesting” her help in getting her contact details.
Hema was intrigued and stupefied. How had these gentlemen figured out where she lived and how did they know about her relationships? They were more than willing to provide the information. It seems they extensively trawled the internet, including Hema’s Facebook account, and figured she was the daughter of the person they were looking to contact. So far, so good. After all, if Hema had left this information in the public domain, anybody was entitled to find it.
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The next piece of news, though, really disturbed her. They had got her address from her bank (not the same bank with which her mother had a credit card). Clearly, the credit collection agency had unauthorised access to her bank’s customer database. She also spoke to the “collection manager” of her mother’s bank to find out how they had managed to get her (Hema’s) address.
The manager confessed such inter-sharing of information happens among banks. Now Hema was furious and wanted to know the name of the person in her bank who had leaked her (Hema) address information to them. At this point, the manager clammed up.
This instance highlights the dangers of unauthorised access to banking information, coupled with the highly personal information we increasingly share on social media such as Facebook.
Remember, this is in an overall environment where data privacy laws are treated with laxity and infringements, on the rare occasion they are exposed, do not end with any stringent punishment or fine.
The government, the police and financial sector regulators need to re-examine the laws in the light of the changes in the environment.
There are upsides of this method as well. When an employee paid a company with a cheque that bounced, the firm was able to track him through his updated linked in profile and served him legal notice. He promptly paid off the loan with interest. Imagine the power of the net.