Govindacharya moves top court against WhatsApp

(Representational image)

Former RSS ideologue K N Govindacharya has moved the Supreme Court seeking an NIA probe against against Facebook, WhatsApp and NSO Group under the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Indian Penal Code, 1860 for allegedly violating fundamental privacy of Indian citizens by compromising their phone networks.

He has also sought perjury proceedings against WhatsApp claiming that it had “deliberately misled” the court. He claimed that during the hearing of a petition filed by Facebook, seeking transfer of four petitions which had been pending in various High Courts on linking of social medial accounts with the Aadhaar number of users, WhatApp had said that user data is fully encrypted and no one including WhatsApp has the key.

But on October 30, he said, WhatsApp Inc., which is a subsidiary of Facebook Inc., revealed to the public that its systems were compromised by Israeli company NSO Group. WhatsApp also disclosed that it has filed a case before the District Court in California against the NSO Group, he said.

Thus the “statement (of WhatsApp) is contradictory to its own filing before the US Supreme Court which states that it came to know about the hacking in May 2019. Thus, it is clear that WhatsApp committed perjury by falsely claiming a protected system and failing to disclose about the NSO Hack to the Hon’ble Supreme Court”, the plea said seeking proceedings against the social media company.