Can summon Mark Zuckerberg to India, says Ravi Shankar Prasad

The world currently seems to be reeling from what is being said to be one of the biggest data thefts online. Information Technology Minister Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad sent out a warning to social media giant Facebook that strict action would be taken if the company is found to have compromised the data privacy of Indians. The Minister also said that he can summon the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, to India if the need arises.

“Mr. Mark Zuckerberg, you better know the observation of IT Minister of India, if any data theft of Indians is done with the collusion of FB systems, it will not be tolerated. We have got stringent powers in the IT Act including summoning you in India,” Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad was quoted as saying.

“Today, 20 crore Indians are on Facebook. If the data of the Indians is shared through Facebook, we have the stringent IT Act. We can even summon Facebook officials for data sharing,” he further added.

Facebook is currently facing the brunt after Cambridge Alanytica, a British consulting company, has been accused of harvesting private data of close to 50 million Facebook users without their consent. This information, it has been alleged, was used by the firm to help politicians, including US president Donald Trump and also during the Brexit campaign.

Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t responded on the issue yet as the world is debating on the data privacy of the popular social media platform. The tech giant has, however, suspended Cambridge Analytica from its platform.

Meanwhile, BJP has lashed out at Congress accusing it hired the services of Cambridge Analytica ahead of certain elections.