Linking of user profile with Aadhaar: SC agrees to hear FB's plea for transfer of cases

New Delhi, Aug 20: The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a plea by Facebook Inc seeking transfer of cases relating to demands to link the profile of social media users with their Aadhaar number.

The social media giant sought transfer of the cases that are pending before the high courts of Madras, Bombay and Madhya Pradesh to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, while refusing to stay proceedings before the respective High Courts also issued notices to the Centre, Google, Twitter, YouTube among others returnable by September 13.

A Bench comprising Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose said the notices to the unserved parties should be sent through e-mail.

The bench said that the hearing in the cases relating to the linkage of social media user profiles with Aadhaar pending before the Madras High Court will continue but also added that no final order will be passed.

The court on Monday was told by the Tamil Nadu government that social media profiles of users need to be linked with Aadhaar numbers to check circulation of fake, defamatory and pornographic content and also anti-national and terror material.

Facebook Inc is resisting the state's suggestion on the grounds that sharing of the 12-digit Aadhaar number, the Biometric Unique Identity, would violate privacy policy of users.

Facebook Inc had said that it cannot share the Aadhaar number with a third party as the content on its instant messaging application Whatsapp was end-to-end encrypted and they too did not have access to the same.