Your favourite online messaging service WhatsApp is a big question of data protection. In Supreme court, WhatsApp wanted to clinch the judges it has never intended to share the user information, content of messages, status updates with another third-party association. Presently in order to prevent allegations from this dispute, a petition has been registered by three of the petitioners Karmanya Singh, Sareen and Shreya Sethi. A constitution bench consisting of five judges directed by Dipak Mishra pinpointed that the Supreme court will further audit the privacy policy statements of WhatsApp 2016., which has been reported to the ground that it purportedly infracted on the fundamental rights.
According to the Supreme Court, it would focus on inspecting the new 2016 WhatsApp privacy policy after it was amassed by all time social networking site Facebook. In previous hearings, the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) revealed the certain court’s decision will analyse the statutes and policies of Facebook, Skype and WhatsApp.
After the case filed by Karmanya Singh along with three other petitioners, Supreme Court prevailed the order on September that WhatsApp should delete the account and user information of those users who have gone for the termination of their respective accounts without sharing their corresponding information with the Facebook.
As Indian constitution does not consist of any law regarding the data protection policy for users but currently according to another PTI report, the Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta stated in an official statement that
“We are coming out with a regulatory regime on data protection. Freedom of choice needs to be protected and there cannot be any doubt about it.”
The petition mainly focuses on the country policy statements which don’t have any specific law for data policy and further asks the state to take prompt action against it.
The petition itself says,
“It is also the responsibility of the State to guarantee and ensure the protection of the personal and private data and information of these millions of citizens when they use such modes of communications to engage in conversations and exchange private and confidential data and information.”
In answer to this, senior counsel lawyer of Facebook has stated that according to the Information Technology Act in 2009 and 2011 recounted the whole action to be taken against including WhatsApp also. But the petitioners later refuted the whole fact specifying that those codes have been outstripped by the further facilitated technological amelioration.
During the court session Harish Salve against the claimants that someone could easily intrude someone’s message details, user information, phone numbers, usage and log data, connected people. Nevertheless, WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted which means no other third cannot have the access to the data transferred by a singular user. On this note Salve also challenged the encryption technique and further altercated with the decision. In his opinion,
“Privacy has multiple dimensions. Here, I am saying that I am entrusting something to you. Confidentiality has to be protected.”
Whereas the appellant’s lawyer repudiated the statement and adjacently asserted his assessment about the change in WhatsApp’s privacy policy. He mentioned about this alternation,
“is unconscionable and is unacceptable and also suffers from constitutional vulnerability.”
As for the solicitation, it also alludes that with the help of stable internet connection plenty of users appeared to be online than before perhaps from this utilisation.
Withal, the original petition holds,
“However, since such services are still relatively new, there is no statutory or regulatory framework/mechanism in place in order to ensure that these services comply with the scheme of regulations envisaged for other such telecommunication services – including the protective features thereof.”
In antiphon of those statements, Facebook lawyer K K Venugopal holding his statement in the court that, everyone has their own free will to quit Facebook and WhatsApp any moment they desire.
“Those who find the new privacy policy irksome or violative of their fundamental rights can quit,”
However, Economic Times revealed in their recent most news that, Kapil Sibal, another advocate for WhatsApp delivered in his statement that even after the turnaround in WhatsApp privacy policy it will never be able to share user information or messages with any other third party. So the privacy level remains intransigent.
As of now, everyone is quite obscure about the final verdict of the Supreme Court. On the next hearing, the court might reveal whether it is going to declare the groundwork for this auxiliary layer of data protection.
