Milind Deora, minister of state for communication and information technology said that department of telecommunication has received a letter from ministry of home affairs to ensure effective monitoring of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter in order to strengthen cyber security paraphernalia.

Replying to a question in Rajya Sabha, Deora said the telecom service providers provide facilities for lawful interception and monitoring of communication flowing through their network including communications from social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter, as per the terms and conditions of their licence agreements.

There are certain communications, which are encrypted by the solution service providers of these services. The telecom service providers are not supposed to know the content of any communication and, therefore, do not know whether a service is encrypted or not.

This is known by the security agencies only when the stream of encrypted content is delivered to them through the facility of lawful interception and monitoring provided by telecom service providers. But security agencies may not be able to decrypt all the intercepted encrypted messages.

The government regularly interacts with telecom service providers and solution service providers to address the issue and implement the solution to the extent possible keeping in view security, service and developmental needs of the country, the Minister informed the House.