Supreme Court asks for Centre’s reply on plea for banning ‘Zoom app’ until appropriate legislation

The apex court on May 22 asked for a response from the Centre on a plea which urges a ban on the use of video communications app Zoom for official as well as personal purposes until appropriate legislation is put in place.

A bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde released a notice to the Centre on the plea which has put forward privacy concern and said that continued use of Zoom app is “making the users vulnerable and prone to cyber threats.”

The problem came up for hearing via video-conferencing in front of the bench, also including Justices AS Bopanna and Hrishikesh Roy, which asked the Centre to file its reply within a month on the request which has presented US-based Zoom Video Communications as one of the respondents in the case.

The plea, filed by Delhi resident Harsh Chugh, also urges the Centre to carry out a detailed technical observation into the security and privacy risks of using Zoom application.

The plea, filed via advocate Wajeeh Shafiq, has reported that continued usage of this app might put the national security at stake and might also give a boom to the number of cyber-threats and cyber crimes in India.

“Zoom is likely to contain a bug that can be abused consciously to leak information of users to third parties. The app has falsely claiming calls are end-to-end encrypted when they are not,” the plea noted.
The plea said that due to privacy and security concerns, several organizations on the global level have banned the use of the Zoom app.

Claiming that cyberspace risk is escalating every day because of global connectivity and online services which makes it easier to hack and access sensitive data of users, the plea said it is not that difficult to hack if a secure network is not used.