Ban on Zoom App: Supreme Court admits petition, issues notice to Centre

May 22: The outbreak of conronavirus pandemic and subsequent nationwide lockdown since 25 March, 2020 has made people throughout the globe depend more on video conference platforms for official meetings and also by teachers for imparting online education. In this regard, Zoom has become one of the most sought after App for online interaction. However, several eyebrows were raised against Zoom, primarily on security issues. In this connection, the Supreme Court on Friday sought the response of the central government in a plea seeking a ban on the use of Zoom software application, citing privacy and security concerns.

The plea alleged that Zoom engaged in “cyber hoarding and data hoarding” and is not safe to use and there is no end-to-end encryption as was advertised by the platform. It is in violations of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for interception, Monitoring and Decryption of Information) Rules, 2009. The Supreme Court has asked for responses from the Central government and Zoom Video Communications Inc. to assess whether the video conferencing application should be banned in India owing to privacy and data security concerns based on a public interest litigation filed with the court.

A bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde and comprising Justices Hrishikesh Roy and AS Bopanna will next hear the case after four weeks. Zoom application saw exponential growth in its users from 10 million in December 2019 to 200 million in March 2020 due to the pandemic-induced lockdown restrictions and are using it to make video calls, host webinars and meetings.