NEW DELHI, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- India's Supreme Court Monday issued a notice to central government, the country's telecom regulator, and free messaging application WhatsApp and social networking site Facebook, seeking their responses on a petition challenging the privacy of online messages.
"It's a free service. Take it or leave it," Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar said, as he heard the plea of the petitioner who sought framing of privacy policy to regulate commercial exploitation of private communication through WhatsApp.
In his plea, Karmanya Singh has alleged that the social networking sites compromise the privacy of interpersonal communication of 150 million users in the country, which amounted to infringement of Articles 19 (Freedom of Speech and Expression) and 21 (Right to Life) of the Indian Constitution.
The top court has given the four parties to the petition -- the Indian government, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, WhatsApp and Facebook -- two weeks to respond to its notice.
In September last year, the Delhi High Court had ordered WhatsApp to delete the data of users who had deleted the messaging application from their devices. Additionally, it was asked not to share these users' data with Facebook.
It is not the first time that WhatsApp's data security has been questioned. A British media report had last week pointed out that the messaging application has a back door that could allow third parties to snoop into users' data. WhatsApp has, however, denied the claim.
