Supreme court judgement in the Aadhar case(2018) mentions that the unique 12-digit-number can be used only for subsidies and welfare benefits; and pointed out that Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act has been struck down to the extent that it authorised body corporate and individuals to use the number to establish someone’s identity.
The submissions in the Supreme Court on behalf of the Tamil Nadu government in support of linking social media profiles of registered users with their Aadhaar numbers are not well-founded in the law as it now stands. Writ petitions are filed in Madras high court for identifying the people who post inflammatory content on the social media like facebook, twitter, whatsapp and gone without traceability.
Arguments against linking aadhar with social media profiles:
- Widespread suspicion about online surveillance could discourage people on using social media.
- Technology companies use end to end encryption have pleaded inability to open a back door for identifying originators as it is lagainst the global policy of the companies.
- As per k.s. puttaswamy case(2017) in the privacy case, any state intervention in the regulation of the online content has to pass the test of proportionality laid down by the court so that it does not affect individual privacy.
Arguments in favour of linking:
- It is easy to identify who post undesirable content like child pornography, sectarian conflict and mob violence.
- It helps protect sentiments of people and do not hurt their feelings by inflammatory posts.
- Intermediaries and social media companies could easily trace the offenders and provide information to the government regarding them.
It is desirable if courts do not impart needless urgency in this situation in order to introduce a balanced regulatory regime to curb inflammatory content. The balance must be right between protecting privacy and allowing the state leeway to curb crime.© 2016, Precisionacademy.in, All rights reserved
Precision Academy