Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala Police has registered a case against Facebook for not removing obscene pictures despite a written order to the social media giant. The action is with regard to the vulgar pictures that were posted by hackers on the Facebook page of a woman psychiatrist in the city.
This is the first case that the Kerala Police has registered against Facebook. The police have begun proceedings to arrest Facebook’s nodal officer in India.
Although the obscene pictures were posted on the Facebook page of the woman, her Facebook profile was not hacked. Since only the page had been hacked, the experts in the cyber wing of the police could not delete the pictures.
Following this, the police issued a notice under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act to Meta Platforms, Inc., which runs Facebook, asking it to trace the hacker and to take steps to delete the pictures immediately.
The stipulation under the law is that such pictures should be deleted within 36 hours. However, even after one week, Facebook did not take any action nor did it tender a proper response. The criminal case against Facebook was registered following this.
Earlier, police could not arrest the culprits behind defaming of social reformer late Ayyankali on social media. The identities used by the hackers were fake.
Complex procedure
According to the procedure, the police must send a letter to the U.S. headquarters of Facebook with the permission of the Union Home Ministry for obtaining account details when crimes such as defaming persons are committed through fake accounts on Facebook.
This is part of the protocol under the contract signed by countries for exchanging details of criminals.
The nodal agency for this process in India is the Central Bureau of Investigation. Since this procedure has been made mandatory in all cyber cases, the police have been hamstrung in proceeding with such cases.
