Trai gets 3 lakh petitions for net neutrality

The net neutrality campaign turned into a storm on Tuesday with netizens shooting off more than three lakh petitions to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) against discriminatory services from telcos and Internet firms.

The Congress warned of protests if freedom of choice of Internet users is compromised. The social media was abuzz with support for net neutrality from politicians, businessmen, actors and others-Omar Abdullah, Digvijay Singh and Ayushman Khurana, Arvind Kejriwal, Aditya Thackeray and Shah Rukh Khan.

Topics like 'NetNeutralityInIndia' and 'SaveTheInternet' continued to trend big time on Twitter. Trai is being bombarded with e-mails in response to it soliciting public opinion on whether telcos can be allowed to charge different rates for different uses of Internet data like email, browsing and use of apps like Whatsapp, Viber and Sky.

IMPACT ON NATIONAL SECURITY

As a debate rages on 'net neutrality', a discussion paper floated by the Trai has said that mobile applications providing free Internet-based calls and messaging services can be a threat to individual and national security.

Besides, it has also come down heavily on taxi-hailing apps like Uber and Ola, as also e-commerce platforms, saying they are bypassing local rules and licensing regime while posing significant risks despite providing easy solutions for the consumers.

The paper, put in the public domain on March 27, is aimed at soliciting comments from all stakeholders for framing rules on net neutrality and on regulation of over-the-top service (OTT) providers like WhatsApp, Skype, Viber and Google Talk. Most applications can trace the user's location for underlying processes (such as GPS apps finding the nearest restaurants).

"This information may be used to commit a crime, or the location itself may be the target of a crime. Such threats can impact the nation's security and financial health," the Trai paper says.

The paper further says that the messaging applications can manipulate social engineering by psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information.

Recently, Facebook manipulated information posted on 689,000 users' home pages and found it could make people feel more positive or negative through a process of emotional contagion, the paper said. It said that messaging applications can unintentionally cause disturbance and affect the social fabric. The paper says that mobile application users also rarely understand that the so-called free apps actually share their personal information with various third party developers, and that this can pose serious threats.

(With PTI inputs)