New Delhi | The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a petition which claims that social media accounts such as Facebook and Whatsapp should be linked to the AADHAR.
The apex court on Monday was told by the Tamil Nadu government that social media profiles of users need to be linked with Aadhaar numbers to check the circulation of fake, defamatory and pornographic content as also anti-national and terror material.
Attorney General KK Venugopal, appearing for the state government, said: “The linking of social media profiles of the users with the Aadhaar was needed to check fake news, defamatory articles, pornographic materials, anti-national and terror contents in the online media.”
He said that Facebook claims that its Whatsapp messages are end-to-end encrypted but there is a Professor from IIT who says that the originator of a message can be traced.
Facebook Inc, however, has said that linking of AADHAR to social media accounts would violate the privacy of the users.
They had said that it cannot share the Aadhaar number with a third party as the content on its instant messaging WhatsApp was end-to-end encrypted and even they do not have access to it.
They have been four petitions across high courts of different cities, with almost the same prayer. Facebook insisted the case to be heard in one legal entity, preferably the Supreme Court.
Venugopal said that hearings in two cases before the Madras High Court were at advanced stages and 18 hearings have taken place so far, and the rest of the case should be continued in the same court.
The top court issued a notice to the Centre, Google, Twitter, YouTube, and others and sought their response by 13 September.
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