West Bengal MP seeks to implead in social media case

She sought to implead herself in the case since as an elected representative of a constituency as she has a duty to voice concerns on their behalf regards protection of their fundamental right to privacy, especially with the arguments in the case moving towards abrogation of individual privacy rights and increase traceability of users on online platforms like WhatsApp andtwitter.

Further, pointing out that in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision recognising Right to Privacy as an integral aspect of the right to life, she said any decision taken by the government to abrogate the privacy on online users should be viewed through the lens of the right to privacy.

Also, noting that as a first requirement there must be a law in existence to justify an encroachment on privacy, the West Bengal MP said “Such a statutory regime was envisaged in the form of Personal Data Protection Bill, which has been in draft form for over a year, despite having gone through a series of public consultations. The said Personal Data Protection Bill through its scheme, contains provisions for conducting the analysis as envisaged by Supreme Court in the Privacy case.”

Hence, any analysis of steps taken for the decryption of online communications, the linkage of Governmental identification with online accounts or any abrogation of on line privacy is premature in the absence of a robust and detailed privacy legislation being used as the framework upon which such an analysis should occur, Mahua Moitra argued.

She also raised concern over IIT professor Dr V Kamakoti’s submissions concerning ways in which the original sender of a WhatsApp message could be traced. Moitra contended that the proposal has serious defects from a privacy standpoint and is unlikely to achieve the intended result since technically skilled persons will always be able to use simple workarounds to mask their own phone numbers, or instead link messages to someone else’s number.

The issue pertains to a plea filed last year to link Aadhaar with email and social media accounts resulting in Madras High Court coordinating efforts by law enforcement agencies and major social media intermediary companies to find more effective ways to curb online crime.