Supreme Court closes PIL for ban on Zoom app after being told government found nothing objectionable

The Supreme Court on Tuesday closed a public interest litigation (PIL) petition seeking ban on the use of the Zoom application over security and privacy concerns [Harsh Chugh vs Union Of India]..A bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and MM Sundresh closed the petition after Senior Advocate Arvind Datar pointed out that even the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) had found nothing wrong in the use of the application. "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.The Court, in turn, proceeded to close the case, observing,"We have considered the Minutes of Meeting of the National Security Council Secretariat (Cyber Wing) held on 28.12.2020 regarding the security features of the Zoom VC Platform. The expert committee having considered the security and privacy aspects, in our opinion, nothing survives in the present writ petition and accordingly, the proceedings are closed and dismissed.".The petition was filed by a homemaker, Harsh Chugh, who had sought a ban on the use of Zoom for official and personal purposes on the grounds that the software gives rise to several privacy and security concerns.The application is available free of cost on all app stores and can be used on phones, laptops, tablets etc. for the purposes of hosting video calls, meetings, webinars and such..As the use of Zoom increased during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, various news reports emerged highlighting security and privacy breaches caused by the application on some occasions. .The petitioner had further highlighted that even the CEO of Zoom had apologised publicly for such lapses and "accepted the app to be faulty in terms of providing a secure environment digitally.".Such security issues have a pan-India effect and were of an urgent nature, the petitioner had submitted. .The petitioner, therefore, sought directions to the government to carry out an exhaustive technical study into the security threats posed by the use of the app and to ban its use until a legislation was brought in place..[Read order]