Trinamool Congress’ Member of Parliament Mahua Moitra plans to “wait and watch” for a few days before knocking on the doors of courts over the WhatsApp privacy breach.
“As far as Pegasus is concerned, we have information that these guys are going to police commissioners in different cities and peddling this like a product like anyone would sell a computer screen or a fancy modem. How could the government not have known?” the 44-year-old told Moneycontrol.
Pegasus is the spyware designed by Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group that was installed in phones exploiting WhatsApp’s video-calling facility.
WhatsApp has sued NSO in the US for allegedly helping governments hack phones of at least 1,400 users across the world, including 121 in India. Those targeted include diplomats, political dissidents, activists, journalists and senior officials. NSO denies the charges.
In India, former RSS ideologue KN Govindacharya has moved the Supreme Court seeking a police case against WhatsApp, its owner Facebook, and NSO for violating the privacy of citizens.
Moitra has sought to be impleaded in a case involving traceability of social media messages and the linking of Aadhaar with social media accounts.
The social media case that the Supreme Court is hearing will be crucial for WhatsApp as it will decide whether the US company will be have to fingerprint each message so that it can be traced to its origin.
WhatsApp says its messages are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be traced.
The government insists that WhatsApp and other messaging services allow for traceability to help law-enforcement agencies fight crimes such as terrorism, child pornography, drug trafficking or the propagation of hate speech.
Moitra said while tracing messages was possible, the question was whether it should be done. “The technicality is not a problem, it is the intent. Why snoop on your own people without procedural guarantee?” she said.
Moitra described legitimacy, necessity, proportionality and procedural guarantees as the “four tests of surveillance” and said there was no data protection law to guard citizens against unwarranted surveillance.
“There is no parliamentary or judicial oversight. Basically, there is an open ground and the government can go and buy all this,” she said.
A former JP Morgan investment banker, Moitra returned to India in 2009 and joined the Youth Congress. She then moved to the Trinamool Congress and was elected to the West Bengal assembly in 2016. She successfully contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election and represents Krishnanagar in Parliament.
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