Social media officials to meet TN secy over data sharing case on Wednesday

Representatives of some social media companies, including Facebook and WhatsApp, will be meeting the Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, as part of an ongoing case relating to data sharing.

The Madras High Court in April directed the Tamil Nadu government to convene a meeting of law enforcement agencies and representatives of social media platforms in May to discuss issues relating to sharing of user data and how cyber crimes could be tackled more effectively.

The case, moved by Anthony Clement Rubin, is seeking a direction to the Centre to link Aadhaar with e-mail IDs and other online user accounts, including those on social networking websites, for easier detection of cyber crimes.

The meeting with social networking platforms was to be held between May 20-27. 

Business Standard learns that WhatsApp will be represented by a US-based official from the company. Facebook was likely to attend, said sources.

During a past hearing, the WhatsApp counsel had informed the court that the messaging platform could not share the data of its users with the government as it was not available with the company owing to its end-to-end encryption policy.

Though Twitter was represented by a lawyer during the case hearing, Business Standard could not verify if a Twitter representative would be part of the meeting.