New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Wednesday listed for hearing on July 21 the appeals of WhatsApp and Facebook challenging its single-judge order dismissing their pleas against the probe ordered by the CCI into the instant messaging platform's new privacy policy and said that the issue of "data sharing" has to be looked into.
A bench of Justices Rajiv Shakdher and Poonam A Bamba adjourned the hearing on the appeals in view of the submission by the senior lawyer for WhatsApp to defer the case for some time in view of the pendency of the data protection law before the Parliament, and directed the parties to file their written submissions in the matter. "Sharing of data, scrapping of data..someone needs to look into it. Aside this case, they say there are 5,000 data points on every citizen… They can predict what you are going to do in every situation," Justice Shakdher observed.
Referring to Cambridge Analytica, a Uk-based company which is facing probe for allegedly illegally harvesting data of Facebook users, the judge questioned the aspect of data sharing in "closed groups" on Facebook.
Senior advocate Harish Salve, representing WhatsApp, submitted that WhatsApp "does not look at messages" and only has "external information" such as phone number and volume of trade.
On Facebook, one puts one's life in public domain, he added. He told the court that as stated by WhatsApp earlier, until the data protection law comes into existence, it will not coerce its users to opt for the updated privacy policy and when the Parliament is "seized" of the issue, there was no question of CCI continuing with its own investigation
into the policy.