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Indian Army Tells Officers To Log Out Of Facebook, WhatsApp

The Indian Army’s advisory board has announced a ban on all the popular social media messaging applications, particularly Facebook and WhatsApp, for officers holding crucial posts and others who are vulnerable to hacks and leakage of confidential data.

The decision comes in light of the Pegasus-WhatsApp spying controversy which eruped last month. While the spying allegedly involves government involvement, it’s not yet known who is responsible for breaking into the phones of Indian social activists, lawyers and journalists.

Taking a safety measure, the army issued an advisory last month cautioning all the officers holding sensitive positions across divisions and brigades to stop using WhatsApp for official use, as reported by The Print.

While the Pegasus-WhatsApp spying controversy has impacted WhatsApp’s reputation, it maintains that its end-to-end encryption was not compromised. Pegasus is the marketed name for the surveillance software developed by an Israel-based NSO Group, which claims it only works with governments and government agencies.

The army cyber division also conducted an analysis of social media trends and identified a new set of challenges on the ways its officials use the internet. It claimed that social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp have the potential to gather intelligence, and can pose a threat to the army personnel families and friends.

Furthermore, as a safety precaution, the army officials and their families have been asked to stop posting their pictures in uniform or photographs of their locations that can give out details of sensitive locations on these social media applications. In fact, the social media policy for the army has been in place since 2016 and has not been taken seriously.

The Indian government’s concerns about WhatApp are not just about Pegasus, it’s also trying to track the source of fake news, misinformation and other questionable content on WhatsApp through its demands for traceability.

WhatsApp and Facebook are currently embroiled in a Supreme Court (SC) case against the Indian government over the demand for traceability of the origin of the messages sent on WhatsApp. WhatsApp claims this would weaken its end-to-end encryption and impact user privacy.

WhatsApp Co-founder Brian Acton Reiterates The Need To Delete Facebook From Our Lives

"It is time. #deletefacebook". This tweet took the social media by storm back in March 2018. The tweeter was none other than Brian Acton, the co-founder of the popular messaging app WhatsApp, owned by Facebook. A year later on November 10, 2019, Acton reiterated his view, this time with valid evidence. Speaking at the Wired's 25th anniversary summit, he reaffirmed his belief and appealed to people to logout and delete Facebook from their lives.

Emphasizing the need to delete Facebook, Acton said, "If you want to be on Facebook and you want to have ads thrust in front of you, go to town." Acton's statement as a direct dig on the social media giant who recently made news for its indecisiveness to ban political bans from its platform.

After Twitter announced that it is banning all kinds of political ads from the platform to curb the spread of lies and misinformation during the 2020 US Presidential campaigning season, tech giants Google and Facebook have said that they are mulling to make changes to their political ad policy. However, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook will not ban posting political ads on its platform because all the company cared for was money.

Acton's tweet highlighting the urgency to logout from Facebook came during the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook was massively criticized for breaching data protection laws by failing to keep users' private data safe and for allowing the now-defunct UK firm Cambridge Analytica to harvest data of more than 87 million people worldwide.

Recently, Facebook agreed to pay a fine of £ 500,000 ($643,000) to the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) over its involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Earlier this year, during his talk at the Stanford University, Acton urged the students to delete their accounts from Facebook.

Defending his outcry against Facebook, Acton said that the lack of 'tombstones' is a fatal flaw on Facebook. He added that he would rather prefer Twitter because it was 'a lot more public and visible'. Acton started WhatsApp along with his friend and co-worker Jan Koum in 2009. After being rejected by Facebook, Acton and Koum wanted to develop an application that lets family, friends and contacts know what's up- thus originated the name 'WhatsApp'.

In 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for a whopping $19 billion. Reports suggest that Acton decided to part ways with Facebook over his conflict with Mark Zuckerberg. He parted ways with Facebook after being pressurized to monetize WhatsApp. After he quit Facebook, Acton co-founded the Signal Foundation, a non-profit organization which created the encrypted messaging service Signal.

Acton is not the first former Facebook executive to openly criticize the social media giant. The former head of growth for Facebook and current CEO of Social Capital, a venture capital firm, Chamath Palihapitiya stated that Facebook has created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. Its high time Facebook should take stringent action to restore its faith among public.

Chandrayaan 3: Details About Lunar Probe, Launch Date & More

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), on Thursday, announced that it is planning to launch its next lunar mission, Chandrayaan 3, by November 2020.

According to a TOI report, ISRO said that it has already started working on Chandrayaan 3. The Indian space agency has also formed several committees, consisting of various panel members, three sub-committees and experts, and have held at least four meetings over the last one month.

ISRO has narrowed down various recommendations related to sub-committees on propulsion, sensors, navigation and guidance among others, after reviewing the configuration of Chandrayaan 3. However, the cost of this project has not been revealed yet.

Interestingly, the Chandrayaan 3 mission will include only one lander and one rover, as the orbiter from the previous mission, Chandrayaan 2, is functioning smoothly, the report added.

An ISRO scientist, involved with the project, reportedly said that the space agency has looked at 10 specific aspects of the mission. This included landing site selection, absolute navigation, and local navigation among others.

The Chandrayaan 3 team will be focussing on detailed analysis on improving the landing system, alongside using a detachable module to optimise the number of manoeuvres around the Earth and also during the entry into the lunar orbital.

The Chandrayaan 2 mission, which was launched on July 22, 2019, failed to complete the mission after it lost contact with the lander called Vikram and a six-wheeled rover named Pragyaan. However, the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter made it successfully into the lunar orbit.

On November 13,  the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter, which is revolving around the moon, had sent a three-dimensional image of a crater on the Moon near Lindbergh captured by the Terrain Mapping Camera-2 (TMC-2). Additionally, it has also sent a 3D view of a wrinkle ridge near Dorsa Geikie.

ISRO is currently working on multiple projects including the Aditya L1 mission, which is a spacecraft mission to study the sun, scheduled to launch in 2019-2020.

Additionally, it has already started working on the Gaganyaan mission, planned for 2021-2022. This is India’s first attempt to send astronauts. If this happens, India will become the fourth nation in the world to join the legacy. The Gaganyaan mission, which costs nearly $1.4 Bn, is expected to be India’s biggest and most expensive space mission of all time.