IB to Home, External Affairs ministries, all turn to I&B special wing for online push

It was the I&B Ministry’s New Media Wing, the online eyes and ears of the government, which has been providing the PMO, the National Security Advisor and top bureaucrats with daily reports on the world of social media.

Last year, when the Intelligence Bureau (IB) got its first lead on @ShamiWitness, they quickly turned to the one organisation they knew could dig out more on the influential Twitter handle operated by a Bengaluru executive to push Islamic State propaganda.

It was the I&B Ministry’s New Media Wing, the online eyes and ears of the government, which has been providing the PMO, the National Security Advisor and top bureaucrats with daily reports on the world of social media — it trawled 40 million websites in just eight months since July 1 last year.

Sources said in the last 10 months, the IB has approached the I&B ministry at least seven times with requests for security-related information that include terrorist threats. And apart from @ShamiWitness, an official from the I&B Ministry who is associated with this wing said they “were the first” to alert IB about the raising of IS flags in Baramullah.

The IB is provided exclusive and unhindered access to the wing at Soochna Bhawan, sources said, adding that unlike other ministries or departments, intelligence officers actually move into the communications hub to mine data and ferret out information they need.

The last time IB officers visited the hub was about a month ago to trace the origin of a tweet about an alleged threat tagged to @MIB_India, the official Twitter handle of the I&B Ministry.

“It is incidental that we are in a domain called Open Source Intelligence,” said an I&B ministry official, who did not wish to be named, adding that the New Media Wing uses Oracle’s SRM (Social Relationship Manager) tool for trawling sites including microblogs.

The I&B ministry has also kept under wraps its Electronic Media Monitoring Centre (EMMC), now located on the tenth floor of Soochna Bhawan, where about 200 content auditors monitor 600-plus channels round the clock.

The premises were inaugurated by the Minister of State for I&B this January 1. “It was deliberately kept a low-key affair and even the media was not called,” said the official.

Under the new government, the EMMC’s functions and responsibility, have expanded significantly. The Home Ministry has provided it with a RAX (telephone hotline) to relay any significant news break aired on the TV channels it tracks. “For instance, the Home Ministry calls for clips from TV channels when riots break out,” said an official.

Besides this, the EMMC sends hourly reports and text messages of news breaking on any channel to top bureaucrats including the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, the National Security Advisor and the Cabinet Secretary.

The I&B Ministry now plans to ramp up its capacity to 1,500 channels over the next two years to meet the challenges presented by an expanding television media. The ministry has already issued licences for 826 channels, with 250 more applications still pending, said a senior I&B ministry official. It has also asked for “additional security” for Soochna Bhawan, considering the ramped-up operations inside.

In the last six months, the official added, the EMMC’s capability to monitor the number of channels has risen multi-fold — from 50 to 150, 150 to 300 and now 600 channels. “The EMMC now covers 12 satellites. The social media hub, housed earlier in the National Media Centre, has been moved to Soochna Bhawan, where the EMMC is located. This has resulted in a functional as well as physical integration of the electronic and social media,” the official added.

According to a senior government official, who does not wish to be named, senior officials from the IB and Home Ministry sought a presentation by the New Media Wing at the National Media Centre as soon the EMMC was integrated with it. They were “suitably impressed” with the scope and potential of the wing and soon enough made requests for tapping its resources, he said.

Since July 1, 2014, after the I&B ministry ordered the integration of TV and social media, news breaks and exclusives on TV channels monitored at the EMMC are immediately passed on to the social media team.

Traffic relating to these news breaks is monitored on social media sites including Twitter, Google, Facebook, Google hangouts, YouTube, and millions of sites to understand what is trending most. “Only those trends relevant to the government are picked. The social media team then undertakes a sentiment analysis to gauge public opinion. This is passed on to higher authorities for possible intervention,” said an I&B ministry official.

Besides the IB, the Ministry of External Affairs is a big customer of the New Media Wing’s reports on social media analytics. For example, the MEA was interested in a comparative analysis of news coverage received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi compared to previous Congress PMs Manmohan Singh and P V Narasimha Rao. The MEA and IB also closely track the sentiments of people on social media relating to the Prime Minister’s overseas visits and those of foreign heads of state to India.

Source:: Indian Express