Editorial
Supreme Court of India’s Welcome Move to Protect our Privacy
It is a welcome development that the recent notice issued by the Supreme Court of India to WhatsApp and Government of India in response to the interim application filed by Karmanya Singh Sareen in 2017 against the misuse of personal data of individuals by the social media giants like Facebook, Google, and WhatsApp.
The case of Karmanya Singh Sareen vs. Union of India is connected to the protection of Personal data and the right of privacy guaranteed to every citizen under the Constitution of India. But the new Privacy Policy of WhatsApp in 2016 is totally against this constitutional promise. The Petitioners, Karmanya Singh and Shreya Sethi, two messaging app users, contended that the new policy aims to gather all details pertaining to any WhatsApp account, such as phone numbers, addresses, comments, system information, as well as third-party records that can be used to fund activities, evaluate consumer accounts and acts, and advertise their services.
Citing the GDPR laws of Europe, when the Court asked the tech giant why should they treat Indians personal data? For which, Whatsapp replied, there is no such law exists in India. So, the onus is on the Government of India to pass the bill that should match the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) framework of Europe. Otherwise, quoting this kind of loophole, these profit-oriented tech giants will simply escape. And this is a right time for the people to migrate from the ‘Data-stealing’ social media to data-protecting’ social media. On any account, we the people shouldn’t forget that all the tech companies have been thriving on our data and most of them are grossly violating our privacy in more than one way. And it must be stopped.
By
Editor-in-Chief
INSTANEWSGRAM