Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has strongly criticised WhatsApp and Meta (which owns WhatsApp) for the messaging platform’s ‘take it or leave it’ privacy policy, adding that the policy appears to enable data theft, reported Bar and Bench.
A Bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi also flagged the unavailability of any clear option for a WhatsApp user to opt out of such a privacy policy.
“Where is the question of opt out? Show me in your mobile. This is a decent way of committing theft of private information! You know your commercial interest and you also know how you have made consumers addicted to the app. Everybody uses it. If the users have a right to opt-out, how will the users know this right exists? Let us see the option and the situation with the user. When it comes to opting out, the information is in a newspaper. How will a person know?” CJI Kant asked.
The court was hearing WhatsApp’s appeals against a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) judgment which had upheld the Rs 213.14 crore penalty imposed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) on the messaging platform over its 2021 privacy policy.
The court warned that WhatsApp cannot expect to get away with violating the right to privacy of Indian users. “You can’t play with the right of privacy of this country, in the name of data sharing. You are making a mockery of the constitutionalism of this country. How can you play with the right to privacy of people like this? People pay you for this.
Consumer has no choice, you have created a monopoly!” CJI Kant said. The Bench eventually suggested that WhatsApp file an affidavit explaining its privacy policy and how data sharing activities under it would work. “A person sitting in rural Tamil Nadu, who only understands their language, how will they understand your terms? Give an undertaking, then we will hear the case on merits,” CJI Kant had observed.
The hearing also veered towards how WhatsApp users are often faced with targeted advertising without any express consent for the same, raising concerns about how private data is shared. “Their entire revenue comes from advertising. We are the products milords. It (WhatsApp) is free because of that,” CCI’s counsel Samar Bansal submitted. “There is nothing wrong if you are making legitimate income out of it,” CJI Kant said.
“May I file a one-page affidavit to apprise the court what we are doing? The court may consider it and then take a call,” Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for WhatsApp, offered.
