The Supreme Court on Tuesday transferred all the petitions concerning linking of social media accounts with Aadhaar from the High Courts across the country to itself. A bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose passed the order on the petition filed by social media giant Facebook in this regard. The court has now posted the matter to January next year as the Centre has sought time till then to notify the new and revised social media norms. During the course of proceedings, senior advocate Shyam Divan appearing for Internet Freedom Association of India, said: “There are freedoms at stake and these are momentous issues relating to privacy.” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Central government, however, said that it is in the process of framing the rules to make social media intermediaries responsible for sharing information with government agencies and strongly objected to the allegation that it is a ploy to trample upon the privacy rights of citizens. “National security will have to be balanced against individual rights,” added Mehta. Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi appearing for Facebook told the bench that there is no obligation on its part to help in decryption.
