SC Dismisses PIL Seeking Ban On The ZOOM Application

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a PIL seeking a ban on the use of the Zoom application due to security and privacy concerns.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and MM Sundresh dismissed the petition after Senior Advocate Arvind Datar pointed out that the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) found nothing wrong with the application’s use.

“This does not survive. Even courts use zoom. MEITY has said nothing wrong with Zoom. And why only target us, not WebEx etc?”, Datar argued.

In turn, the Court decided to disposed off the case.

Harsh Chugh, a homemaker, filed the petition, seeking a ban on the use of Zoom for official and personal purposes on the grounds that the software raises several privacy and security concerns.

The app is free to download from all app stores and can be used to host video calls, meetings, webinars, and other events on phones, laptops, and tablets.

Various news reports emerged during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting security and privacy breaches caused by the application on some occasions.

The petitioner also stated that Zoom’s CEO publicly apologized for such lapses and “accepted the app to be faulty in terms of providing a secure environment digitally.”

The petitioner had submitted that such security issues have a pan-India impact and are urgent.

Therefore, the petitioner sought directions to the government to conduct a thorough technical investigation into the security risks posed by the app’s use and prohibit its use until legislation was brought in place.