Centre's job to get social media to disclose info: SC

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it is for the government to frame guidelines to make intermediaries like Facebook and WhatsApp provide information on offending posts.

The top court stressed that the guidelines must keep in mind the privacy of individuals and, at the same time, help in maintaining the sovereignty of the country.

A bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose said that it is not for the court to do what is to be done on framing the guidelines.

"If the government frames the policy then we can decide if it is up to (conforming to) the law," the bench said.

The top court asked the Union government to file an affidavit within three weeks and posted a matter related to making the social media companies like Facebook and WhatsApp answerable to the law enforcement agencies here, for consideration on October 22.

During the hearing, Justice Gupta said, "I don't think, the HC and SC should decide how intermediaries should work."

Attorney General K K Venugopal, appearing for Tamil Nadu, said these social media companies must be answerable to the laws as it is seen many a time, fake news are circulated creating law and order problems.

Senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Kapil Sibal, appearing for Facebook and WhatsApp respectively, submitted that the matter pending before the Madras High Court must be transferred to the apex court for adjudication.

Venugopal, along with Tamil Nadu's Additional Advocate General Balaji Srinivasan, contended that the matter had been heard over there for quite some time, and the high court must be allowed to complete its hearing.

"The HC is not going into any other questions. This is going on for quite some time. An IIT professor has come forward saying he can find out who is the originator of the message in WhatsApp, which claimed there is an end to end encryption," they said.

Justice Bose, for his part, pointed out, "There is enough power for the police to seek information under the existing provisions of the CrPC and the IT Act."

The bench also said one can't say we don't have the technology to do it.

"Why should govt not approach the intermediary and ask who is the originator of some message," the bench said, adding suppose one wanted to file a civil defamation suit for some derogatory post, he must be able to know who wrote it to take action against him.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, submitted that the draft rules have been framed and suggestions have been invited from the public on it.