New Delhi, February 15: People have serious privacy concerns, the Supreme Court said on Monday, making it clear that it is the court’s duty to protect that right when it heard a motion against WhatsApp’s new privacy policy. The observation came when senior lawyer Shyam Divan, who represented petitioner Karmanya Singh Sareen, was looking for an instruction to prevent WhatsApp from implementing its new privacy policy in India. Government to Drop Proposal to Use WhatsApp, Another Social Media Platform for Salary Communication: Report.
“They developed a new differentiated privacy policy for Europeans and different rules for Indians,” argued Divan. He added that WhatsApp should not adopt its new privacy policy until the new data protection law comes into effect in India.
Thereupon Chief Justice SA Bobde replied: “We will publish a notice regarding this.”
A chief judge-led bank made up of Judges AS Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian told WhatsApp’s attorney, “People have serious privacy concerns. They may be a $ 2 or 3 trillion company , but people value their privacy more than your money … we have to protect people’s privacy. ”
The Supreme Court has informed WhatsApp and Facebook of this plea against its new privacy policy. Senior lawyers Kapil Sibal and Arvind Datar, who appeared on behalf of WhatsApp, strongly denied Divan’s argument, saying that the Delhi Supreme Court was already dealing with the matter.
There are different privacy laws in Europe, according to Sibal, and WhatsApp’s new privacy policy for India is similar to that in the US, Australia and other countries. “The fact is that this policy applies to the rest of the world except Europe. In Europe, it’s different because they have a special law,” he argued.
Attorney General Tushar Mehta, who represented the center, said the right to privacy is a fundamental right and they cannot compromise people’s privacy.
Divan cited that WhatsApp had already postponed implementation of its new privacy policy until May 15 this year and requested a notice that could be returned before that date. The bank said it was impressed with Divan’s claim that WhatsApp is putting a policy on data sharing while the data protection law is due to go into effect. Datar also said that messages are encrypted end-to-end. The Supreme Court ordered WhatsApp and Facebook to file their statement challenging objections to the present motion.
The chief judge told the WhatsApp attorney that people think if a message is sent from one person to another and then to a third person, the whole thing is communicated to Facebook. When the attorney alleged it was not, Chief Justice Bobde disagreed, saying that they are telling information heard and read through news reports and if WhatsApp disagrees it should be resolved under oath.
The Supreme Court found that it needs to consider whether a similar petition pending in the Delhi Supreme Court can be upheld if the Apex Court’s Constitutional Bank is already preoccupied with the matter WhatsApp’s privacy policy for Was challenged in 2016. After an in-depth hearing on the matter, the Supreme Court sent notices to WhatsApp, Facebook and the Center on the matter and ruled the further hearing after four weeks.
(The above story was first posted on February 15, 2021 at 5:48 pm IST. For more politics, world, sport, entertainment and lifestyle news and updates, please visit our website at latestly.com.)
