News on e-mail snooping unfortunate: CM
Posted on: 18 Jan 2012
Thiruvananthapuram: Chief minister Oommen Chandy while briefing the cabinet decisions termed the news on hacking of e-mails of leaders, activists, professionals, students and journalists from the minority community as baseless and unfortunate.
He said the media should show restrain while giving such news, as it would hamper the communal harmony.
He said that Madhyamam weekly which gave the news has not published the complete list and provided the lists after removing the emails of people belonging to other communities. He said the weekly must come clear on this.
The CM said investigating officers got 268 mail ids from a person and they were handed over to the hi-tech cell of the police to obtain the addresses of the persons who had created the ids. The attempt was made only to know the identity of persons in whose names the mail ids were created and there was no effort made to hack the password or contents in these mail ids, he said
But CM kept mum on the question that on whose direction the scrutiny was held. A controversy arose after Madhyamam daily reported that Police had sought passwords and login details of these accounts from various service providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Rediffmail and Asianet India, among others.
Alleging that it was an attempt at religious profiling, the daily claimed that 268 e-mail accounts have been subjected to surveillance, out of which 258 belongs to Muslims. None among them had any previous criminal backgrounds and so there is no clarity as to why they were put under surveillance, it added.
The probe was ordered after leading Muslim organisations in Kerala demanded the Chief Minister's explanation in this issue as he is handling the Home Affairs
Other cabinet decisions are
The state government will hand over 239-acre land to railways for Palakkad coach factory.
The state government would ask the nationalizeds bank to issue moratorium for agricultural products.
New project to improve ahads project and would be provided Rs 16 crore for four years.
