In an attempt to beef up surveillance and curb cyber snooping, the Indian Navy has issued orders to ban the use of social networking platforms by its personnel, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp within naval areas. Along with the apps, the use of smartphones has also been disallowed onboard ships and naval airbases. Navy has said that the ban on messaging apps, networking and blogging, content sharing, hosting, e-commerce sites is under promulgation. An operation was launched by the Andhra Pradesh Intelligence Department in association with Central Intelligence Agencies and Naval Intelligence to probe a spy racket that has links with Pakistan. Seven Navy personnel from Vishakhapatnam and a hawala operator for Mumbai were arrested after they allegedly passed on sensitive information like locations of naval ships and submarines to a Pakistani handler

Source: dna December 30, 2019 04:52 UTC