Delhi High Court disturbed by Facebook sharing the data

Delhi High Court disturbed by Facebook sharing the data

Justice Shakdher acknowledged being aware of data points, using which the social media companies could predict a person's behavior

The Delhi High Court has expressed concern about the privacy policies of social media companies, including Facebook (now Meta). It observed that sharing and scraping of people's personal data by these companies needed scrutiny.

The division bench of Justice Rajiv Shakdher and Justice Poonam A Bamba stated that people were concerned about their privacy. A lot of them were unaware that the social media giants were sharing their details with private entities including Cambridge Analytica (CA).

CA is a British political consulting firm embroiled in a controversy after the Facebook-CA scandal came to light. It was accused of collecting the data of millions of people to influence the voting pattern in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom. It was allegedly also involved in the 2016 Presidential campaign in the United States.

The high court was hearing the appeals filed by Facebook and WhatsApp against the order of a single judge. The judge had refused to interfere with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) probe into the new privacy policy of WhatsApp.

Appearing on behalf of Facebook and WhatsApp, senior advocate Harish Salve apprised the court that the new policy provided the user the freedom to not share their data. It involved no coercion. And that until the government came up with a data protection bill, the arrangement would continue.

He also clarified that while communication on WhatsApp was end-to-end encrypted, it was not so in the case of Facebook where a person puts his life in the public domain.

However, Justice Shakdher said that it would have been better if Salve had been an amicus in the case. "We are concerned about data sharing by Facebook. I personally feel someone needs to look into this."

He further said that reports suggested that these social media companies had around 5,000 data points on every person and by using the data; it could predict his/her behavior in any situation.

When Salve said that whenever a friend of his visited Goa a notification popped up on Facebook informing him that he had landed, Justice Shakdher mocked that it was okay to receive such notifications. But the problem was that those companies were able to predict what the person would be doing in Goa.

While the case has been listed for hearing on July 21, the counsels appearing for the petitioner and the respondents have been advised to file their written submissions.