RSS Ideologue Writes To Supreme Court: Book WhatsApp For Perjury Since It Didn’t Disclose Hacking, Spyware Issues

An ideologue of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) K N Govindacharya has written to the Supreme Court urging it to book WhatsApp for perjury.

WhatsApp must be booked for perjury since it failed to disclose to Indian courts about the hacking of its Indian user accounts using spyware developed by Israel’s NSO Group technologies, even while a petition on traceability of its messages is being heard.

According the the petition, WhatsApp did not disclose to the courts about the hack despite having full knowledge about it at that time. The government, being a party, must file suitable application against WhatsApp for perjury, the petition said.

Incidentally, the perjury claim was made in the matter of the Supreme Court hearing a transfer petition by Facebook from the Madras High Court, which was originally about linking of social media accounts with Aadhaar.

Separately, Govindacharya has also written to the wrote to Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad seeking a probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) against WhatsApp, its owner Facebook, the Israeli NSO Group Technologies and it parent company Q Cyber Technologies, for compromising public data.

His letter has stated that government accounts on WhatsApp must be removed in the interest of national security and that the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment) Rules 2018, must be notified to make such companies accountable.

The letter-petition stated that while Information Technology Ministry officials claim that WhatsApp failed to inform the government about the hack, the ministry itself has not notified the intermediary rules which would make it possible to penalize companies if they fail to inform the government about any security incident involving Indians.