party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said that Gandhi had received a message from the Facebook-owned messaging platform informing her that her phone could also have been targeted with the snooping software at the same time that other users in India were notified“

I want to tell that Priyanka Gandhi also received a similar message from WhatsApp around the same time,” Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said, responding to a question about Praful Patel and Mamata Banerjee receiving messages from the Facebook-owned messaging platform.

On Thursday, reports had revealed that several members of the civil society in India have been the target of surveillance through a spyware, Pegasus, which was developed by an Israeli cyber intelligence firm, NSO Group. Pegasus was used to target around 1,400 users globally during a two-week period in May.

So far, 17 people, mostly lawyers, human rights activists, and journalists, have confirmed that they were targeted by spyware through WhatsApp.

Sources told that after she received the message warning her that her phone was suspected to have been targeted, Gandhi did not think much of the message and deleted it. The messages alerting the users were sent out by Citizen Lab, a Canada-based cyber security group that is assisting WhatsApp in investigating the spyware attack.

After the controversy erupted this past week when, the Congress communication team, the sources said, asked Gandhi about it and sent a copy of messages received by activists reportedly targeted, to which she confirmed that she had received similar messages. Gandhi, they added, says she also received calls from international numbers around that time but hadn’t answered them.

The Congress spokesperson blamed the ruling BJP of targeting opposition leaders with the snooping software, and said that the party suspects that many senior politicians and judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts have also been spied on.

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The bench, comprising Justices Gupta and Aniruddha Bose, emphasised how misuse of social media could prove dangerous for India and its law and order while noting that the government should come up with a policy. It also pointed out that the role and duties of intermediaries such as Facebook and WhatsApp should be determined appropriately so that accountability can be fixed.

“It is dangerous how some of these technologies work. I was thinking of giving up my smartphone and going back to feature phones,” said Justice Gupta.

Mehta replied, “That would be wise… some of us already have.”

Justice Gupta then went on to narrate an incident about how he, with the help of a professional, reached an internet post where AK-47 could be bought.

“People can buy even AK-47 on the internet… there have to be strict guidelines. Why do we have to worry about the internet only? We will worry about our country,” he said.

Saying that it wants to strike a balance between personal privacy and state sovereignty, the bench asked the Solicitor General to place before it the draft guidelines so that the court can take a view on it.

The bench also talked about the need to use the information about the originator of a message, saying that in cases of hate crimes, defamation and other such cases, such information must come through. Neither the apex court nor the high court is competent to decide this scientific issue and it is for the government to come up with proper guideline to deal with these issues, the bench said.

The top court had earlier asked the Centre to clarify whether it was contemplating forming guidelines or a framework for linking social media accounts of users with their 12-digit biometric unique identifier Aadhaar. The court had said the matter, to help trace the originator of a content, needs to be decided at the earliest.

The court is hearing a bunch of petitions filed by Facebook and WhatsApp, contending that the Supreme Court should transfer to itself all the matters on social media guidelines pending before various high courts. One of the issues in this case is linking social media accounts with Aadhaar.

The Centre told the court that it had no objection to the transfer of the cases as much judicial time has been spent by high courts on such cases. Facebook and WhatsApp had said they have filed two appeals against Madras High Court orders.

The Tamil Nadu government in its reply to the transfer petition had claimed that Facebook Inc and other social media companies were not complying with Indian laws, resulting in “increased lawlessness” and difficulties in “detecting crimes”.

It had sought change of the August 20 order of the apex court directing the Madras High Court to continue hearing pleas for linking social media profiles with Aadhaar but restraining it from passing any orders.

The high court is at an advanced stage of hearing but due to the apex court’s August 20 order, it deferred the hearing on those petitions, the state government had said.

Referring to different criminal cases, the state government had said local law enforcement authorities have attempted to seek information from these companies for investigation and detection of crimes on several occasions.

It had said that these companies ask authorities to send letters rogatory “despite operating on Indian soil” and have always “failed to give complete information”.

On August 20, the apex court had sought response from the Centre, Google, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube and others on Facebook Inc’s plea seeking transfer of cases, related to linking of social media accounts with Aadhaar, pending in high courts to the apex court.

Facebook Inc, while seeking the transfer of the cases to the top court, had contended that whether service providers can be asked to share data with probe agencies to help them in criminal investigation needs to be decided by the apex court as it will have a global effect.

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