Govt has no intention to violate Right of Privacy, says Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad

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Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that the government is committed to ensure the Right of Privacy to all its citizens. He said that at the same time it is also the responsibility of the government to maintain law and order and ensure national security. The Ministry of Electronics and information technology has said that the government has no Intention to Violate Right of Privacy When WhatsApp is Required to Disclose the Origin of a Particular Message. 

The Ministry has said that as per all established judicial dictum, no Fundamental Right, including the Right to Privacy, is absolute and it is subject to reasonable restrictions. It has said that as per the Intermediary Guidelines, the originator of information can only be traced in a scenario where other remedies have proven to be ineffective, making the same a last resort measure. It added that such information can only be sought as per a process sanctioned by law thereby incorporating sufficient legal safeguards. It further added that an order, to trace first originator shall be passed only for the purposes of prevention, investigation, punishment etc. of inter alia an offence relating to sovereignty, integrity and security of India, public order incitement to an offence relating to rape, sexually explicit material or child sexual abuse material punishable with imprisonment for not less than five years.

The Ministry said that on the one hand, WhatsApp seeks to mandate a privacy policy wherein it will share the data of all its user with its parent company, Facebook, for marketing and advertising purposes, and on the other hand, WhatsApp makes every effort to refuse the enactment of the Intermediary Guidelines which are necessary to uphold law and order and curb the menace of fake news.

It added that the rules enacted by the Indian government in public interest are not rules enacted in isolation but have global precedence. It said that what India is asking for is significantly much less than what some of the other countries have demanded.