The Indian government has criticized the social media platform x (previously Twitter) over its weak response to an increase in hoax bomb threats targeting both domestic and international flights within the last couple of days. Over 150 flights have faced false threats in the last week, causing inconvenience and raising security concerns over multiple airlines, including Akasa Air, Air India, IndiGo, and Vistara, operating on the Delhi to several routes.
To deal with the situation, a virtual meeting was held on Tuesday evening, presided over by the joint secretary Sanket S. Bhondve. Air India and Vistara management joined the meeting along with key leaders from X and Meta. As can be remembered, while meeting with the government side during the proceeding, the government complained that X failed to act properly and sufficiently regarding the occurrence of the circumstance that led to the perpetration of the crime and accused the platform of negligence that the government equated to “abetting the crime.” This statement underlines the difficulties inherent in the work of the Delhi Police: the police failed to obtain the user ID and domain information from X accounts connected with the threat messages.
Cybersecurity organizations have launched measures to address this deepening concern, pulling or banning about ten social media accounts, mainly on X, since Monday. Police have noted that there are jingles that have been used over and over again in the fake threats, including the ‘bombs’ and the ‘blood will spread everywhere.’ This is because they continue to be involved in identifying the email registration’s originating point to identify the geographical locations of all of these accounts.
In a similar incident, the Mumbai Police arrested a 17-year-old boy from Chhattisgarh in connection with the hoax bomb threats made to the three flights coming out of Mumbai on October 14. This case brings into focus how there is a strong requirement for law and order and social networking websites to act in a better-coordinated manner to avoid such disruptive and potent terrorizing threats in the future.
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