Top executives of Twitter India deposed before a parliamentary panel on Friday to discuss issues related to its alleged data breach, poor privacy laws and the severe allegations levelled by its former employee Peiter Zatko on its India operations.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Technology chaired by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor summoned top Twitter executives including the director and senior director of Twitter India’s public policy.
Sources told PTI that the micro blogging site was reprimanded by the committee for its “not satisfactory” response over the issues. Twitter refuted Zatko’s allegations of knowingly appointing Indian government “agents” on the company payroll where they had “direct unsupervised access to the company’s systems and user data”. The micro-blogging site was reportedly also questioned on its data security policies and if it were in sync with local and global privacy policies.
Twitter has clarified that government did not force it to appoint anyone and that these allegations were false. It said that it follows strict data safety standards and that most of its employees do not have access to user data.
The parliamentary committee also asked Twitter how it handles conflicts in national privacy policies of different countries to which the executives did not give satisfactory replies.
The parliamentary committee has been holding meetings with various stakeholders including tech companies, social media firms, ministries and other regulators on the issue of people’s data security and privacy. Besides Tharoor, Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, TMC MP Mahua Moitra, TRS MP Ranjith Reddy, BJP’s Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and CPI(M)’s John Brittas attended the meeting.
The panel also summoned IRCTC following its announcement of tender to hire a consultant for monetising the passenger data. Indian Railways is scrapping the tender which was floated a month back causing an uproar amid privacy advocates. The tender which was floated only after receiving a green signal from the higher authorities sought the appointment of a consultant who would help Railways analyse the large passenger data bank and draw plans to monetise it.
