WhatsApp on Friday informed the Delhi High Court that it has decided to put on hold its controversial privacy policy update until the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, comes into force.
Senior Advocate Harish Salve made the submission on behalf of WhatsApp before a Bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh, in their petition against Competition Commission of India.
“Government has asked to shut down the policy. We have said we will not enforce it till Data Protection Bill comes out. That is open-ended because we don’t know when the Bill is going to come out...We have said we will not do this for a while. Suppose the Bill allows me to do it, we will have completely different ramifications,” said Salve.
The senior lawyer also informed the Court that the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has communicated to WhatsApp that it feels that the WhatsApp Privacy Policy is against the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information), Rules, 2011.
“We replied to MEITY’s notice seeking a response, saying that WhatsApp will not limit functionality for some time and continue to show users the updated version...We will maintain this approach until Data Protection Bill comes into force. We have voluntarily agreed to put the update on hold till then,” Salve said.
