Use social media with responsibility: Governor tells NDC trainees

Hyderabad: Addressing the team of officers and faculty members of National Defence College, who called on him at Raj Bhavan, Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan said social media was creating panic and rumor mongering among people and it is doing more harm than any good to the society and people should be cautious while using it.

The team of officers led by Abhay Tripathi, Additional Secretary & Faculty-in charge of National Defence College, met the Governor at Raj Bhavan on Thursday as part of their visit to Telangana state under the "National Security and Strategic Studies" training programme at the National Defence College, Ministry of Defence, New Delhi. The team of fifteen officers also consisted of one defence officer each from Australia, Malaysia and Bhutan.

The Governor said these days, one of the most important threats is cyber warfare or cyber threat which is not new and existed even before. He said threats come in the shape of disruption, sabotage and subversion and in the olden days it was easy to trace as human element was involved. He said because of the present day digital world, it has become difficult to find origin of such threats as there is no human intervention and the spread is far and wide. He further said nowadays, only wars of low intensity will be fought as no country would want to fritter away their precious human resources. The Governor said the objective is to destabilise, spread wrong information, create lack of confidence etc. He said social media is sometimes acting irresponsibly aided by digital technology, brainwashing on the media with grey scenes creating an impression of may be true or may be wrong. This is going to be perception management and becomes a major threat by brainwashing of people.

Narasimhan said the problem with our cyber technology is that the critical infrastructure still exists in the form of wired technology which is prone to sabotage. He said in the long run every single facet of our life is going to be affected by the digital subversion.

The Governor said in the digital world human aspect cannot be forgotten and technology can never be a substitute for human intelligence. He said a computer can reproduce only what a human will input similarly a robot serving in a hotel cannot make any difference between a normal customer and a terrorist.

Narasimhan said with e-invitations, e-greetings etc. social media has literally taken away the human touch and human element from the society and said the fine line between truth and untruth is missing and negative-ness in society is more dangerous and social values should be brought back in the society.

Abhay Tripathi, Team leader thanked the Governor and felicitated him with the presentation of a Memento.