WhatsApp’s senior lawyer who is representing the company on the whole privacy policy issue has now made a bold statement asking people to quit WhatsApp and Facebook if they are too concerned about the privacy while using the two apps. KK Venugopal, who is the counsel appearing for Facebook (read WhatsApp) said – “Those who find the new privacy policy irksome or violative of their fundamental rights, can quit. We’ve given full freedom to users to withdraw from Facebook and WhatsApp.”
On the other hand, Harish Salve who is representing the petitioners opposed the statement by saying – “They claim that this is being done to improve services to be given in future to users. Whether the snooping is done electronically or manually, the right to privacy of users gets breached. The government is duty bound to protect the fundamental right of every citizen. If it is failing, then the SC can surely issue appropriate directions.”
To recall, a couple of students named Karmanya Singh Sareen and Shreya Sethi with the help of their advocate filed a petition against WhatsApp of sharing crucial user information with Facebook. However, WhatsApp soon denied and claimed that it is only sharing some of the user data and that too only by mutual consent.
On the other hand, an extract from WhatsApp’s privacy policy back then read – “Your WhatsApp messages will not be shared onto Facebook for others to see. In fact, Facebook will not use your WhatsApp messages for any purpose other than to assist us in operating and providing our Services”. This clearly brought out an ambiguous thought as the case was then stretched for too long.
Interestingly, a similar case was recently witnessed in Germany where Facebook soon agreed to pause the whole process of WhatsApp sharing the data with Facebook which apparently applies that Facebook is, in fact, getting the benefit of the lack of any concrete privacy laws in India.
The preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 15 and while people will surely fall on both sides of the argument this time, what do you think?