Social media giant Facebook has moved the Supreme Court. It has appealed that four pending cases on Facebook and Whatsapp in various High Courts be moved to the apex court. The cases are pertaining aadhaar linkage and origin of messages.

Appearing for Facebook, senior counsel and former Attorney General for India, Mukul Rohatgi argued that there was now an ordinance which will allow voluntary use of Aadhaar by private entities. However, two High Courts have ruled in favour of not sharing the Aadhaar data while two such cases are pending. Rohatgi added that clarity was needed in this case as it is of public importance as privacy is a serious concern.

There was some to and fro on the subject of traceability of a message to its origin. Rohatgi maintained Whatsapp’s stance that messages on its platform were encrypted and thus not traced.

The current Attorney General, KK Venugopal on the other hand made a case for why this was necessary. He argued that defamatory statements, anti-national messages and pornographic content is being widely shared with impunity. He further added that an IIT professor has already demonstrated before a High Court how such messages could be traced.

The government is expected to oppose WhatsApp's stance on traceability further tomorrow when the apex court takes up the case for further consideration.

First Published:Aug 19, 2019 3:13 PM IST