CHENNAI : Social media giants Facebook and WhatsApp have refused to oblige the Tamil Nadu government’s plea to help trace originators of objectionable content in order to crack cyber crimes. They submitted written replies to the government’s June report before the division bench of the Madras High Court, which was hearing a PIL petition filed by RTI activist Antony Clement Rubin on Wednesday.
In the replies, accessed by Express, the firms have unanimously said: “The State government’s request would cause disproportionate harm, if granted, including significant harm to privacy, free speech and end-to-end encryption and should thus be denied.”Sandeep Solanki, Power of Attorney-holder for Facebook, said: “The State government’s request includes no safeguards to prevent an abuse of tracing mechanisms...” He said Facebook takes the safety of its users seriously. In fact, in many cases of potential self-harm, Facebook escalated the case to law.
For instance, on May 22 this year, police were notified when a user in Chennai was on Facebook live with a rope around his neck and appeared to be at risk of imminent harm. Facebook can remove content only upon receipt of a valid court order or a request from an authorised government agency, issued in accordance with the IT Act and was not required to proactively monitor its platform for unlawful content.
Brian Hennessy, Power of Attorney of WhatsApp, also made arguments on similar lines in his written reply.
Senior counsels – former Attorney General of India Mukul Rohatgi and Kapil Sibal – appeared for Facebook and WhatsApp respectively. However, IIT-Madras professor GS Madhusudan, an expert in data privacy/security issues, who is assisting the Madras High Court, told Express that arguments by social media firms were trivial. Petitioner’s counsel Pravin Rathinam said the social media firms can pocket millions of dollars of revenue and do not co-operate with law enforcement agencies for the crimes happening using their platforms.
Another argument of social media firms was that the State government’s request for an order directing intermediaries to trace originator information interferes with the Central government’s ongoing consultative process to address the issue in the draft Information Technology Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment) Rules, 2018. On December 2018, the proposed amendments were published on the website of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) for review and public comment.