CHENNAI: The Madras high court on Thursday directed the state government to submit all the details of requests made to social media companies including Facebook and WhatsApp, for aiding in the investigation of crimes, and their responses. A division bench of Justices S Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad passed the interim order on a plea moved by Anthony Clement Rubin, seeking direction to the Central government, to link Aadhaar with email IDs and other social media platforms, for the detection of cyber crimes.
The bench also directed the government to inform the approximate time frame until draft intermediary guidelines will be set up. When the plea came up for hearing, advocate general Vijay Narayan, representing the State, submitted that under the draft guidelines, there are provisions whereby such media houses are obliged to notify the authorities regarding any crimes committed through their platform, within 72 hours.
Till the guidelines are notified, the court should direct social media companies to cooperate with investigating agencies, he added.
The bench noted that even recently, violence occurred in two districts due to messages forwarded through WhatsApp. To this, WhatsApp informed the court that inherent limitations stemming from their use of end-to-end encryption, prevented them from tracking the original sender of the message.
Encryption issue
The High Court division bench noted that even recently, violence occurred in two districts due to messages forwarded through WhatsApp. To this, WhatsApp informed the court that inherent limitations stemming from their use of end-to-end encryption, prevented them from tracking the original sender of the message