Centre using tax money to snoop on people: Congress

Accusing the BJP government of intruding into privacy, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said, the BJP government has a “perennial, habitual, repetitive and ingrained tendency... (to) act as big brother and to watch you (public) and to intrude into every aspect of your life and every aspect of your privacy”.

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Congress senior Leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi (Files)

A tender floated by the Centre to create a 24×7 social media communication hub to gauge public sentiment by trawling various social media platforms, came in for sharp criticism on Friday, with the Congress calling it the “worst example of using tax payers’ money to snoop on tax payers”.

Accusing the BJP government of intruding into privacy, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said, the BJP government has a “perennial, habitual, repetitive and ingrained tendency… (to) act as big brother and to watch you (public) and to intrude into every aspect of your life and every aspect of your privacy”.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has recently invited bids from private players to build and operate the social media communication hub.

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Quoting from the tender, Singhvi said the government’s idea was to create a platform to collect “digital media chatter from all core social media platforms, as well as digital platforms, like news, blogs and forums, along with a proprietary mobile insights platform, in a single system providing real-time insights, metrics and other valuable data”.

He said, the platforms, the new tool would be able to “listen” and “respond” to, will include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Play Store, besides email, news, blogs, complaint sites and forums. “The tender does not have even a single safeguard against invasion of privacy,” Singhvi said.

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