Satej Patil questions govt's silence on Tek Fog expose

Maharashtra Minister of State for Home and senior Congressman Satej Patil has raised questions over the silence of the Government of India and Information and Technology ministry over the Tek Fog expose.

He has also demanded that the Centre should take cognisance of it by keeping the party politics aside.

In his tweet, Patil has said, “I am astounded by the silence of the GoI & IT Ministry over the #TekFog expose. A political party is using an app for mass targeting and harassment of Indian citizens and journalists, especially women journalists, hacked into inactive WhatsApp numbers of Indian citizens. This is a severe crime and a global shame to our democratic country! I request @GoI-Meity, @Ashwini Vaishnaw to go beyond party lines and take impartial cognizance of this issue at the earliest.”

Raising concern about BJP for using Tek Fog app to manipulate social media and organise mass targeting against individuals including female journalists on Twitter, Patil had last week termed it as a severe breach of the privacy of the Indian citizens.

“Disturbing yet not shocking that the Tek Fog app is used by the BJP to manipulate social media to target and maximize harassment of Indian citizens, including that of female journalists,” he said.

Patil said: “This app also uses WhatsApp numbers of Indian Citizens for mass messaging without the user even knowing! This is highly offensive & a severe breach of every Indian citizen’s privacy.”

In an investigative report by the online publication The Wire, it was revealed that Tek fog is a secret app used to manipulate trends on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp by BJP to automate hate attacks on individuals on the social media.

The app, according to publication, could bypass the security features such as Captcha in social media platforms and had ability for app operatives to delete or remap all existing accounts at a moment’s notice.

This feature theoretically allowed them to destroy all incriminating evidence of their past activity, the article said. The app also hacked into inactive Whatsapp numbers of Indian citizens to mass forward messages.

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