Aadhaar-Social Media Linking Case: Next Supreme Court Hearing on 13 September

It was as of late recommended by the Tamil Nadu government that if social media platforms are linked with Aadhaar numbers, it will be easy to check the dissemination of fake, defamatory and pornographic content, anti-national and terror content.

The Madras High Court has now deferred the public interest litigation (PIL) for this case to 19 September. It was chosen by the Supreme Court prior that it will hear Facebook's supplication for the exchange of cases identified with requests for the linking of social media profiles of users with their Aadhaar numbers, pending under the steady gaze pending before the High Courts of Madras, Bombay and Madhya Pradesh to the apex court. The Supreme Court enabled Madras High Court to proceed with the hearing of this case; however, not to pass the final order. The next Supreme Court hearing is scheduled for 13 September.

Attorney General KK Venugopal, appearing for the Tamil Nadu government told the Madras High Court that Facebook said that origins of WhatsApp messages could not be traced as the messages are end-to-end encrypted, but they have found out with the help of an IIT professor, that this is not the case. As per him, the message originator can be traced by linking social media profiles of users with their Aadhaar numbers.

Whereas, Facebook says that it cannot share the Aadhaar number with a third party as the content on WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, and even they do not have access to it.