"The privacy of people is more important than your money": Supreme Court issues notice to WhatsApp

"The privacy of people is more important than your money": Supreme Court issues notice to WhatsApp

The Supreme Court has asked WhatsApp to give an undertaking on oath that private data of users is not being shared with any third party. The Court observed that the Indian citizens have apprehensions about their right to privacy after Whatsapp introduced its new privacy policy and directed the company to explain its stance by filing a counter-affidavit within 4 weeks.

While issuing notices to Facebook and WhatsApp, a Supreme Court Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India SA Bobde said, "The privacy of people is more important than your money." The Court said this while hearing an application that sought to restrain WhatsApp from implementing its new privacy policy in India.

According to the petitioners, Indian users are being treated unfairly as WhatsApp has a different privacy regime for European users.

The Chief Justice said, "You may be two or three trillion company. But people value their privacy more than money."

The order came on application filed by the Internet Freedom Foundation in the case Karmanya Singh Sareen & Anr. v. Union of India & Ors., in which a petition was filed in 2016 raising privacy concerns when Facebook merged with WhatsApp. In January 2017, the Supreme Court had referred the Facebook-WhatsApp privacy case to a five-judge bench.

The application by the petitioners sought the Supreme Court to order WhatsApp not to go ahead with its new policy till the Constitution Bench decides on it or the Centre comes up with Data Protection law.

Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, representing WhatsApp denied that any private sensitive data is being shared and pointed out that the issue was pending before the Delhi High Court.

Advocate Shyam Divan who represented the petitioners informed the Supreme Court that Whatsapp is discriminating between its Indian users and its European users as WhatsApp has a different privacy policy for Europe and another set of privacy policy for Indians.

He urged the Court to make sure that WhatsApp does not use "lower privacy standards" for Indian users when compared to Europeans. He also urged the Court to direct WhatsApp not to share data with Facebook or any third party till the Personal Data Protection law comes into force. He further sought that the Ministry of Electronics & IT be directed to ask WhatsApp to not implement the new privacy policy till the privacy concerns are addressed.

Recently, a bench headed by the Chief Justice refused to entertain a plea challenging the new privacy policy of WhatsApp and asked the petitioner to approach the Delhi High Court which is considering two petitions against WhatsApp.