ILNS: The Delhi High Court declined Facebook’s petition challenging the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) order directing a probe against messaging application WhatsApp’s new privacy policy.
A single-judge bench of Justice Navin Chawla had, on April 13, reserved its order on two separate petitions moved by the social media giant and the messaging app.
Senior Advocate Harish Salve appeared for WhatsApp, while Senior Advocate and former Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Mukul Rohatgi represented Facebook.
When the matter was being heard by way of video-conferencing, Salve told the court, “The said issue isn’t a competitive issue. CCI has jumped the gun and directed a probe. It’s a mere amplification.
“WhatsApp can’t see the conversation of a user with its friends and family, as its End-to-End encrypted and the new policy doesn’t change anything in this,” said Salve, adding that the new policy is only with regards to the business accounts, which are linked to Facebook.
He further went on to argue that WhatsApp does not retain the messages of any of its users. “We do not retain messages. They are deleted from our servers after they are delivered. The backup too is saved on the user’s phone only,” he added.
Rohatgi, appearing on behalf of Facebook, said, “We are the parent company. The privacy policy of Whatsapp is being looked after in the Suo Motu matter (CCI order). It’s not my policy, I don’t know why I’m a party to this, I am just the parent company and this is no one’s case that it’s a joint policy.”
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He argued that the order by CCI is merely amounting to ‘perversity’ and the exercise of the suo motu jurisdiction by the said Commission is completely ‘wrong’ and ‘barred’.