Centre Asks X To Take Steps To Curb Hoax Flight Bomb Threats

Following the recent bomb threats received by Indian airlines, the central government of India has asked the micro blogging platform ‘X’ to take steps to curb the rumours spreading on the platform. 

They were also asked to use artificial intelligence-based solutions to block the accounts that have been sending messages.

According to a NDTV report, joint secretary Sanket S Bhondve took a virtual meeting with airline representatives and social media platforms, including X and Meta. 

Further, aviation minister K Rammohan Naidu added that the government is trying to make amendments with a legal team working on it. “We are definitely pushing forward to have changes in the Act also so that it addresses offences that happen when the flight is on the ground and also make it cognizable offence,” he added.

Notably, Indian airlines have been seeing an increase in bomb threats lately. 

Meanwhile, X has resisted the requests from Indian authorities in the past. For instance, earlier this year, the platform expressed its disagreement with the takedown orders from Election commission of India. 

In July 2022, X approached the Karnataka High Court (HC) and challenged the Indian government’s orders to block some accounts, URLs, and tweets.

Citing violation of freedom of speech, the platform sought a judicial review of the content takedown orders. 

However the platform lost the case at the time and was directed to pay INR 50 Lakh in fine. The Musk-led platform then challenged the ruling before another bench of the same HC in August last year.

Earlier this year, the IT ministry was reportedly mulling to block end-to-end encrypted email service ProtonMail at the Tamil Nadu police request over hoax bomb threats.

This was after the platform removed its physical servers from India in response to the country’s “new surveillance law”.