For its part, the government must review the rules and seek broader consultation; it is true that fundamental rights may not be absolute, but restrictions must meet the criteria of legality, necessity and proportionality, as the Supreme Court pointed out in the Puttaswamy judgment of 2017.
The confrontation between the Center and WhatsApp on the issue of user privacy must be resolved, with both parties moderating their positions. Freedom of speech is important, as is privacy, but social media platforms need to be regulated as messaging services with such a large number of users can potentially cause disruption. There are concerns that the government will use the courier service very frequently to find out the first sender of a message, although it has listed some specific cases that would trigger a request on its part. There are also concerns that the government is trying to stifle dissent. As difficult as it may sound, we need to find a way to allow users to express their views on social media / messaging services without their privacy being affected, but also without allowing anyone to do anything stupid. .
WhatsApp claims that tracing the first creator would require that the end-to-end encryption of the messaging service be broken and in doing so, the underlying privacy principles would also be violated. This argument stems from the nature of technology which cannot predict which message should be traced; therefore, the platform should develop the ability to identify the first sender for each message sent. While it is not clear whether this is possible, or how easy or difficult it is, but if alternative identification systems can be built, half the battle would be won. For its part, the government must review the rules and seek broader consultation; it is true that fundamental rights may not be absolute, but restrictions must meet the criteria of legality, necessity and proportionality, as the Supreme Court pointed out in the Puttaswamy judgment of 2017.
Legal experts say the executive may have overstepped its powers while setting IT rules released in February this year. Some believe that the IT law should have been amended to incorporate some of the conditions, which currently only flow from the rules. They point out, for example, that due diligence under the IT law does not provide for the identification of any user and therefore the rules cannot introduce this mandate. As for concerns about the exercise of powers, unrestrained freedom of speech is not allowed, but the possibility, however small, that the government could block dissent of all kinds. The rules should be worded in such a way that social media intermediaries are regulated, without necessarily suppressing them completely. The security of the nation or the fight against serious crimes like sexual abuse, especially against children, are undoubtedly of the utmost importance, but regulations must also be fair. Certainly, we cannot exclude cases of inequity in any system; but the aim of the legislation should be to minimize them. Maybe drastic measures like imprisonment can be done away with.
Unfortunately, India does not yet have a data protection law, although a draft personal data protection law is currently being considered by a joint committee of Parliament. The PDP bill essentially deals with how personal data – sensitive data, including financial information – is handled by government and businesses. Hopefully the law, when enforced, will protect individuals.
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