The Supreme Court on Monday refused to take up a plea by RSS ideologue K N Govindacharya for registration of an FIR by the National Investigation Agency against Facebook, WhatsApp, and Israel-based NSO group for violating the fundamental right to privacy of Indians, following reports on breach of mobile phones of more than 121 users here.
A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices B R Gavai and Surya Kant questioned the petitioner for making a plea for perjury action against the company for claiming before the top court in a separate case that users data were fully encrypted and no one including WhatsApp has the key to decrypt it.
Though senior advocate Vikas Singh, representing the petitioner, said he would not press for perjury action, the bench said it would not entertain the plea, forcing the petitioner to withdraw the PIL.
In his plea, the petitioner pointed out the social media company, with 40 crores of Indian users, has revealed that its systems were hacked by an Israel based intelligence company called NSO Group, through Pegasus spyware, in which data of many Indian users were also compromised.
(Published 02 December 2019, 16:30 IST)
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