The parliamentary panel on Information Technology is set to meet on Wednesday to discuss the WhatsApp snooping issue. The panel headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has summoned officials from the home ministry, IT ministry and even department of atomic to discuss the topic “Citizens’ data security and privacy”.

Other members of the panel include Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, Trinamool Congress MP Mohua Moitra, as well as BJP MPs Tejaswi Surya and Sunny Deol.

The meeting comes at a time when 17 civil society activists wrote to the panel seeking a detailed probe in to the snooping charges. The government is yet to give a direct response to questions by MPs on whether it has monitored the exchange of information by citizens.

Meanwhile, Hyderabad Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi sought to know from the IT ministry through a Lok Sabha question “whether the Government has taken note of the fact that a spyware/malware ‘Pegasus’ of Israel-based NSO group has reportedly been used to infect/spy/steal mobile phone data of many human rights activists, journalists and other eminent persons of the country.”

Owaisi further wanted to know “whether the Government has taken cognizance of the reports of alleged use and purchase of the Pegasus spyware by Government agencies and if so, the details thereof along with the reaction of the Government thereto.”

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The IT Ministry in its response told Owaisi that the government has taken note of the fact that a spyware affected some WhatsApp users. The ministry further added that as per information provided by WhatsApp, 121 users were impacted.

The ministry also told the Lok Sabha that WhatsApp informed about the breach to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in May and September where the messaging platform maintained that the “the full extent of this attack may never be known”.

On its part, CERT-In has issued a formal notice to WhatsApp seeking submission of relevant details and information.

First Published:Nov 20, 2019 2:02 PM IST