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Supreme Court: While hearing Facebook Inc’s petition asking Supreme Court to hear all cases related to demands for linking Aadhaar to social media accounts and tracing the source of WhatsApp messages, the Court said that there has to be a balance between privacy and how to govern. The court, hence, issued notice to Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, the centre and Tamil Nadu asking for their response by September 13 on whether the petitions should be transferred from high courts across India to the Supreme Court. Various cases are being heard by the high courts of Madras, Bombay and Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.

The Court said,

“There is a conflict between privacy and how the government should run the country when crimes are committed. There has to be a balance… under what condition information can be given and to whom,”

Facebook and WhatsApp, asking that all petitions be transferred to the top court, said it was a matter of high magnitude and affected the privacy of the entire nation.

On Monday, the Tamil Nadu government had told the Supreme Court that social media profiles of users need to be linked with Aadhaar numbers to check the circulation of fake, defamatory and pornographic content as also anti-national and terror material. However, Facebook Inc resisted the state’s suggestion on grounds that the sharing of the 12-digit Aadhaar number, the biometric unique identity, would violate privacy policy of users.

Facebook Inc said it cannot share the Aadhaar number with a third party as the content on its instant messaging WhatsApp was end-to-end encrypted and no one can access it.

The Tamil Nadu government, which is deep into a case related to the deadly Blue Whale game, argued that the centre was struggling to find out who the creator of the game was and who gives directions. Attorney General KK Venugopal, representing Tamil Nadu, said,

“Someone says he is a young person from Russia. A number of people have died in India playing the Blue Whale. Let the Madras High Court continue with its hearing,”

The Supreme Court said,

“We are aware of Blue Whale. What is happening in dark web is worse than Blue Whale. The idea of the Madras High court expanding the issue was that if need be, shouldn’t the intermediary inform the police about details of person for crime detection? We are not examining the merits of the case, only dealing with the transfer of the cases to the Supreme Court.”

(Source: NDTV)

Case BriefsSupreme Court

Supreme Court: In the light of the data privacy concerns raised before the Court in the matter relating to Whatsapp data sharing with it’s parent company Facebook, the 5-judge bench of Dipak Misra, CJ and Dr. AK Sikri, Amitava Roy, AM Khanwilkar and MM Shantanagoudar, JJ asked Senior Advocates Kapil Sibal and Arvind Datar, appearing for Whatsapp and Facebook, to file affidavits with regard to the assertions made by the petitioners within 4 weeks.

Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta brought to the Court’s notice that a committee headed by Former Supreme Court judge, Justice B N Srikrishna, was being formed to deliberate on a data protection framework for India keeping in mind the need to ensure growth of the digital economy while keeping personal data of citizens secure and protected. He further submitted there was a possibility that the law shall be passed regulating the data protection once the committee submits it’s report. Arvind Datar also submitted that the 9-judge bench, in Justice KS Puttaswamy v. Union of India, 2017 SCC OnLine SC 996, had expressed the view that there should be a law with regard to data protection.

Refusing to pass any interim order restraining the respondent from sharing the data with the third party, the Court said that it will consider passing interim order after the affidavits are filed and if the assertions made in the affidavit would not require any kind of intervention by this Court, this Court may not pass any interim order. The matter will next be taken up on 20.11.2017. [Karmanya Singh Sareen v. Union of India, 2017 SCC OnLine SC 1051, order dated 06.09.2017]