New PIL Challenging WhatsApp Updated Privacy Policy: Delhi High Court Seeks Centre’s Response

The Delhi High Court issued notice to the Centre and social media platforms, Facebook and WhatsApp seeking their responses on a PIL challenging the new privacy policy of WhatsApp. The Bench of Chief Justice D. N. Patel and Justice Jasmeet Singh sought their response on a PIL petition filed by one Harsha Gupta (an Advocate and Educationist) through Advocates Vivek Sood (Senior advocate) and Dhruv Gupta. The Union Of India, WhatsApp, and Facebook have been impleaded as the respondent parties in the petition. Notably, the petition challenges WhatsApp’s general terms of services as well as WhatsApp Business terms of services as violative of the provisions of the IT Act and the right to informational privacy which is implicit in the right to privacy recognized under Article 21 of the Constitution.The Plea states that the information and data provided to WhatsApp by the users, as per the terms of services, is used by WhatsApp not only for rendering the services for which the users have enrolled, but also for sharing this information and data with the Facebook Companies without providing the option to the users to opt out of such arrangement. It further submits that WhatsApp also collects various kinds of information and data of the users of its services not entirely relevant for providing the main services of the WhatsApp App i.e., messaging and communication.