Troubles for WhatsApp over the roll-out of its new privacy policy seem to be mounting. Amid severe criticism and backlash, a petition has been filed in the Supreme Court on Saturday (January 16) by the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) against the instant messaging app’s privacy policy.
In its petition, CAIT sought directions from the court to ensure that WhatsApp withdraws its new privacy policy, stating that it encroached upon various fundamental rights of citizens, which were granted by the Constitution of India.
The apex trade body, which represents seven crore traders and over 40,000 trade associations across the country, also confirmed about this development on its Twitter handle.
The CAIT also wanted the government to frame guidelines to govern big-ticket names such as WhatsApp, and frame policies that would protect the privacy of citizens and businesses alike, because “the data of Indian users can be misused by such big tech companies”.
The petition also highlights the difference in approach taken by the European Union countries and India with respect to the privacy policy.
"During its launch in 2009, WhatsApp had found wide public acceptance by promising user data wouldn’t be shared and that its privacy principles were sound enough to guard against any violation,” stated CAIT national president B C Bhartia and secretary general Praveen Khandelwal in the petition.
They called WhatsApp’s ‘my way or the highway’ approach as arbitrary, unjustified, unconstitutional and unacceptable in a democratic nation like India, and warned that they wouldn’t allow any corporate or conglomerate to impose “obnoxious policies and sinister designs”.
In 2014, after the messaging app was acquired by Facebook, there was doubt and fear among users about their data privacy being compromised. However, WhatsApp had reiterated that they were committed to safeguarding personal user information.
Just two years later, in August 2016, WhatsApp introduced a new privacy policy that violated users’ rights as it granted Facebook and its group of companies to access user data for advertising and marketing purposes. Since then, it has been tweaking its policy to collect and share information with third party apps, the CAIT office-bearers said.
For its part, WhatsApp has deferred its plans of enforcing its privacy policy from February 8. In a tweet, the Facebook-owned company said that to “clear any confusion” they will start communicating directly with WhatsApp users. “No one will have their account suspended or deleted on Feb 8 and we’ll be moving back our business plans until after May –(sic)”, the tweet further stated.
The Twitter post was attached with a blogpost titled ‘Giving More Time For Our Recent Update’ to clear doubts about the ‘misinformation’.
Yesterday (January 15), CAIT tweeted that it had communicated to Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, seeking restriction on WhatsApp rolling out its privacy policy.
The tweet read: “In a strong communication sent to Union Minister Shri @rsprasad today, @CAITIndia has reiterated that #WhatsApp must be restricted from implementing it’s new privacy policy & a technical audit of WhatsApp, Facebook & Instagram must be conducted immediately. (sic)”
