Use of internet and social media by non-state actors for subversive activities is a major security concern. How have these been misused in the recent past? Suggest effective guidelines to curb the above threat.

How the tools are misused

• Recruitment and radicalisation: polished videos and private chat pull a youth from grievance to a module; ISIS and other groups industrialised this after 2014.
• Instruction and operational security: bomb-making notes, encryption, and dead-drop accounts replace a physical handler.
• Rumour as a weapon: fake images of violence can start a riot or a flight of people, as in the 2012 North-East exodus rumours on SMS and social media.
• Communal incitement: forwarded clips, often old or foreign, timed for a procession or an election.
• Fundraising: online wallets, charities that are fronts, and publicity for kidnappings.
• Live terror: attackers on the move using phones for media and for handlers, as seen in several urban assaults worldwide and in Indian investigations after 26/11-era plots.
• Cyber crime overlap: phishing and malware to fund or to steal data from officials.
• Separatist and insurgent propaganda aimed at the diaspora and at local youth in Kashmir and the North-East.

Recent-past illustrations

• Global jihadist use of Twitter, YouTube, and Telegram-style channels for brand and for lone-wolf calls.
• Indian cases of modules busted with Facebook and WhatsApp trails; police often find the handler abroad.
• Mass rumour moving faster than a district’s public-address system.
• Use of virtual private networks and foreign servers to sit outside easy summons.

Effective guidelines to curb the threat

• Law with a narrow aim: use Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Information Technology Act blocking and interception powers (sections 69 and 69A), and ordinary IPC offences against incitement — with judicial or high-level executive oversight so the 66A-era vagueness does not return.
• Intermediary rules: time-bound removal of unlawful content on a lawful order; a local office and a compliance officer for large platforms; preservation of logs for investigation. Do not demand a general pre-censorship of all speech.
• CERT-In, NTRO, and State cyber cells that share indicators of compromise and of terror handles in hours, not months.
• Open-source and undercover capability in police, with language skills, instead of only a blocking request.
• Financial trails: freeze wallets and hawala that sit behind the page; involve the Financial Intelligence Unit.
• Counter-speech: official fact pages during a rumour spike; community voices that are trusted in that town, not only a Delhi press release.
• Digital literacy in schools and madrasas and through the police beat: how to spot a fake video, whom to call.
• Crisis protocol: when a riot clip spreads, district magistrate, police, and platforms on one call; targeted restriction if a court or statute allows, rather than a long, blanket shutdown that also blinds the honest citizen and the police.
• International cooperation: Budapest Convention-type mutual assistance, and requests to firms that store data abroad.
• Prison and probation: monitor known radicalisers’ accounts; deradicalisation that is more than a locked SIM.
• Protect encryption for the honest user while using targeted lawful intercept on identified suspects — a mass backdoor is itself a security hole.