NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has issued notices to both WhatsApp and its parent company, Facebook, seeking responses from the tech giants on the proposed policy changes by the messenger app.
A bench comprising chief justice of India SA Bobde, and justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian observed that “people have grave concerns about their privacy” while stating, “You may be a two trillion, three trillion (dollar) company but people value their privacy more than money.”
The top court was reviewing a petition that cited concerns regarding WhatsApp users’ privacy and alleged data violation after the proposed changes come into effect.
The petition has sought directions to be issued to WhatsApp not to lower privacy standards for Indian users, and to apply the same privacy policy and terms of use to India as is being applied in the European Union.
"There is no clarity on when the data protection legislation will be passed and brought into effect in India. In order to protect the rights of crores of citizens of India, till an appropriate regulatory regime is brought into existence by operation of law, it is imperative that this court prohibits the operation of the new privacy policy sought to be made mandatory by WhatsApp," the application stated.
The plea also sought a direction to the ministry of electronics and information technology (MEITY) to direct WhatsApp to not implement the new privacy policy till the concerns are addressed.
While refuting the petitioner’s allegation of users' data sharing, Facebook counsel senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi told the court that they were complying with government guidelines and that such fears were baseless. In its response to the petitioner’s claim that WhatsApp is differentiating between India and Europe, the messenger's counsel senior advocate Kapil Sibal said that this policy is applicable to the rest of the world except Europe, stating that, “In Europe it is different because they have a special law.”
Dismissing this argument, the bench observed that “while the data protection bill is about to be brought into force (in India), you are framing a policy to share data.” The top court then directed the popular messaging app to address all the data and privacy concerns of its users, giving the firm four weeks to file an affidavit stating that they would not compromise users’ data.
In January this year, WhatsApp renewed its terms of service and privacy policy, which were to come into effect on 8 February. This new policy makes it mandatory for its users to agree to its new data-sharing norms, a key point of which is allegedly sharing data from WhatsApp business chats with Facebook. Since there was no opt-out option, there were speculations about users’ privacy which led to many users migrating to alternate messaging apps like Signal and Telegram. WhatsApp has since deferred its policy changes to May 2021.
