SC seeks government’s reply on plea seeking to ban Zoom video calling app

New Delhi, May 23: The Supreme Court has sought a reply from the government on a petition that sought to ban the Zoom video calling app.

Harsh Chugh, a part time tutor said in his petition that the use of Zoom should be banned for both official and personal purposes until a law addressing data security issues is put in place. A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India, S A Bobde issued notice to the government returnable by four weeks.

In April, the Union Home Ministry had issued an advisory on the secure use of Zoom meeting platform by private individuals. It said that it not for use by government offices, officials or official purposes.

The advisory said that Zoom is not a safe platform. Those private individuals who would still like to use Zoom for private purposes may follow the guidelines, the MHA had also said.

Broad objective of this document is to enable/disable certain settings is to:

• Prevent unauthorised entry in the conference room
• Prevent an authorised participant to carry out malicious on
• the terminals of other in the conference.
• Avoid DOS attack by restricting users through passwords
• and access grant.

Most of the settings can be done by login into users zoom account at website, or installed application at PC/Laptop/Phone and also during conduct of conference. However certain settings are possible through certain mode/channel only. For example, lock meeting can be enabled by administrator only when the meeting has started. This documents explains in details all the security configuration through website, App and through console during the conduct of conference.