The draft rules for monitoring social media posts will require government agencies to obtain a court order before they ask platforms to trace the origin of posts, reported The Economic Times, citing two government officials aware of the development. The new rules are expected to be finalised by the end of January.

Platforms with 5 million or more registered users will need to accede to the requests from government agencies with order from a judicial magistrate court or a higher court.

“Any request for traceability can be misused, commercially, politically or technically. Traceability is a privacy violation, so provisions under the Puttaswamy judgment which permit such violation under certain conditions have to be applied, otherwise it won’t stand legal scrutiny,” the ET report cited one of the officials as saying.

The Puttaswamy judgment refers to the Supreme Court verdict in 2017 which states that the government will need to declare motives for collecting private data, authorities ordering it, and procedures it will follow.

The new rules impact all major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and TikTok, among others.