The state has a duty to ensure that subscribers of online service providers are not “entrapped” by them, the Supreme Court advised the government on Tuesday.
The government responded that it was in the process of building a regulatory regime of a binding nature to protect user data.
“State has a duty to protect the citizenry rights. Since service providers like WhatsApp and Facebook say we are giving it free, the state has to ensure that 160 million citizens who are using the service, are not entrapped in it,” a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra said.
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The court’s remarks came at the end of a day-long hearing on petitions contesting the constitutionality of the contract entered into between WhatsApp and Facebook on data sharing.
The Bench asked if WhatsApp, an instant messaging platform, can impose any condition on its users here violating any part of the Constitution.
K.K. Venugopal, counsel of Facebook, told the Bench that they were not sharing any sensitive or personal data and since India was shifting to digitisation, the service provided by WhatsApp was beneficial as it was end-to-end encrypted.
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