The Supreme Court on Tuesday came down heavily on Meta Platforms Inc and WhatsApp while hearing their appeals against a Competition Commission of India order imposing a penalty of Rs 213.14 crore over the privacy policy, saying tech giants cannot “play with the right to privacy of citizens in the name of data sharing”.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi said that it will pass an interim order on February 9. The top court ordered that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology be made a party to the petitions.
It was hearing appeals filed by Meta and WhatsApp against a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) judgment that upheld the CCI’s findings of abuse of dominance, while granting limited relief on advertising-related data sharing.
"You can't play with the right of privacy of this country in the name of data sharing. We will not allow you to share a single word of the data, either you give an undertaking...you cannot violate the right of privacy of citizens,” the CJI said.
The bench said the right to privacy is zealously guarded in the country and noted that the privacy terms are “so cleverly crafted” that a common person cannot understand them and questioned the very premise of user consent, asking “where is the question of opt-out”.
“Where is the question of opting out? This is decent way of committing theft of private information,” underlining that such practices cannot be justified under the guise of data sharing or user acceptance.
Appearing for the government, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta criticised the "exploitative" policy for sharing user data for commercial purpose, and the Chief Justice responded, "If you can't follow our Constitution, leave India. We won't allow citizens' privacy to be compromised."
The court made pointed observations about the policy, including asking if it could be understood by the millions of poor and uneducated people in the country. "... a poor woman or a roadside vendor, or someone who only speaks Tamil... will they be able to understand?"
“This is a decent way of committing theft of private information, we will not allow you to do that... You have to give an undertaking otherwise, we have to pass an order,” the CJI said.
"Sometimes even we have difficulty understanding your policies..." the court ripped into Meta and WhatsApp after being told of an 'opt out' clause, "... so how will people living in rural Bihar understand them?"
The Chief Justice then offered his own experience as a benchmark.
"If a message is sent to a doctor on WhatsApp... that you are feeling under the weather... and the doctor sends some medicine prescriptions, immediately you start seeing ads..."
An international group of users has reportedly moved a lawsuit against Meta Platforms, Inc., earlier last month, alleging that the company misled billions of WhatsApp users about the privacy of their communications and made false claims that chats are “end-to-end” encrypted.
Meta has rejected the charges, describing the lawsuit as baseless, reported Bloomberg.
According to a the report, the suit was filed on Friday in a US District Court in San Francisco and questions Meta’s long-standing position that WhatsApp messages are secured through end-to-end encryption and remain inaccessible even to the company.
The filing also refers to alleged “whistleblowers” who purportedly brought these practices to light, although the complaint neither names them nor details their specific role.
