'You may be a trillion dollar company but...': Supreme Court notice to WhatsApp, Centre over privacy policy

The top court said that the matter will be heard after 4 weeks

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to social media giants, Facebook and WhatsApp, on a plea challenging its latest privacy policy, saying there was apprehension among citizens on sharing of user data.

A Bench of Chief Justice of India S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian said that people's privacy must be protected in view of the allegation that user data being shared with other companies.

There is a concern as citizens have "great apprehension about loss of their privacy" and they think that their data and chats being shared with others and it has to be looked into, the court said.

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"You (WhatsApp and Facebook) may be two or three trillion companies but people value their privacy more than money. It is our duty to protect their privacy," the bench told counsel, appearing for Facebook and WhatsApp.

Senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Arvind Datar, appearing for WhatsApp and Facebook respectively, denied the allegations and called this "misinformation".

The bench, however, told the companies' counsel, "We are telling you what we heard and read. People think that if A sends a message to B and B to C. The circuit of messages is revealed to Facebook."

Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for petitioner Internet Freedom Foundation, contended that there is a great amount of metadata which is shared for profit and is a privacy concern.

"We pray that privacy standards are not lowered for Indian users by WhatsApp... They be barred from sharing data with Facebook," Divan said.

Divan said in January that WhatsApp came up with the new privacy policy which undermined the privacy of Indian users compared to the European counterparts.

This policy was supposed to be brought in by February 8, 2021, and Indians were asked to migrate to the new privacy policy, but this deadline has been extended to May 14, he said.

Sibal and Datar denied differential treatment between Europeans and Indians in its new privacy policy. Sibal, appearing for WhatsApp, argued that Europe has a special law (General Data Protection Regulations), which India doesn't and the company will follow the law if Parliament legislates.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said that the companies cannot share data of users and data must be protected.

The court then issued notice to WhatsApp and Facebook and posted the matter for consideration after four weeks.

The top court was hearing an application filed by Internet Freedom Foundation challenging WhatsApp's latest privacy policy which was introduced in January in India. The petitioner sought guidelines to safeguard the personal data and privacy of over 400 million Indian WhatsApp users.

It has sought an interim stay on the operation of the new Privacy Policy of WhatsApp. The plea stated that the 2021 Policy of WhatsApp is "highly invasive and has been unilaterally forced upon Indian internet users".

It has urged the Court to grant an ad-interim order, restraining the sharing of any personal data of users by WhatsApp with Facebook for marketing or other purposes.