Supreme Court to hear WhatsApp Private Policy case today

The hearing in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy case will take place in Supreme Court on Thursday. On April 18, the Centre had sought deferment of hearing in the case as it assured the apex court that it was considering actively a law to protect data imprint of individuals using WhatsApp, Facebook and other social networking websites.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) was in the process of evolving the data protection framework, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told a five-judge constitution bench, headed by Justice Dipak Misra.

On January 17, the Supreme Court had issued notice to WhatsApp and Central Government over data privacy. The court had also asked to examine if Facebook’s access to call details, messages, pictures and documents exchanged by the users of WhatsApp violated their right to privacy.

A petition was filed before the Supreme Court, claiming that there is no protection of data on Facebook and WhatsApp.

According to the petitioner, there are 157 million users on WhatsApp and Facebook, therefore the service provided by the social network and messaging app should be considered as a public utility service.

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The Delhi High Court had in September 2016 ordered WhatsApp to delete the data of users who had deleted the messaging app from their devices.

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