Indian government slams Facebook over WhatsApp 'privacy' update, wants its own Europe-style opt-out switch The Indian government has sent a fierce letter to Facebook over its decision to update the privacy rules around its WhatsApp chat service, and asked the antisocial media giant to put a halt to the plans. In an email from the IT ministry to WhatsApp head Will Cathcart, provided to media outlets, the Indian government notes that …
There is probably a severe timeline constraint to creating a complete GDPR policy for a country the size of India before May..
All the Indian Government need to do is put out one campaign to tell the public to switch to Signal or Telegram and almost instantly Zuckerberg will backtrack. No need to even speak to him.
The problem is, it takes a lot of effort. It isn't just writing a law, you need to give companies time to adjust their systems, change how they work, re-write systems, in some instances, so that they can comply.
They need to train staff, appoint a data protection officers. The government would need to create a new body, like the ICO.
All of that in 6 months? Hard to do.
South Africa has legislation, PoPI (Protection of Personal Information) very similar to GDPR and should also have an opt-out ability, but its market size is pretty insignificant in the bigger picture. Facebook generally just ignores it. India has the benefit of being the largest WhatsApp market so much easier to get Facebook's attention.
Note: With Brexit, UK lost GDPR protection and UK customers are moving from Facebook Ireland/EU to Facebook/US jurisdiction. I can imagine Facebook would fight hard against further balkanization of the customer base.
Another item, many EU citizens have noted that GDPR offers them protection regardless of where they are (resident), i.e. the Facebook filter cannot be geographic presence. tl;dr: It gets messier really quickly, but I bet it's not something Facebook really wants to address, because it "dilutes" their data schnarfing base.
India is also the proving ground for their deep integration with (hosted) businesses and payment gateways so Facebook has a strong interest in that not going belly-up.
No - GDPR was replaced by UK-GDPR on 31/01/2020 which is regulated by the ICO.
UK-GDPR is basically the same as GDPR, although it has changes on National Security/Intelligence Services and Immigration.
(e.g. https://www.cookiebot.com/en/uk-gdpr/)
That's not to say that it couldn't change, and if FaceBook are ignoring GDPR then they will do the same for UK-GDPR of course...
The UK is still in the "European Region" which is EEA + UK if we believe WhatsApp's privacy policy however everything sent to Facebook's platform (Business, Facebook Messenger) is slurped.
You can put your pedant hat away.
It seems that WhatsApp lumps lots of countries together into the "Europe" region where it follows GDPR whether or not the countries are part of the EU. Course, it may only be a matter of time until, like Facebook, UK users of WhatsApp are considered part of "rest of the world".
Given how capriciously, including retroactive tax grabs, various Indian governments have enacted legislation in the past, I don't think that would matter. It's also not shy to wield the ban hammer.
But this is probably just standard posturing and sabre-rattling: not a day goes by in India without it. Presumably, a suitable donation to the BJP will help resolve the issue…
After suitable warnings to those most effected WhatsApp has been excised from Adair's phone (it was only there under sufferance anyway).
Wickr Me (one person I know prefers to use this), Signal and DeltaChat remain to cover messaging needs. How many services do we actually need anyway?
Clearly what we can all live without are a bunch of arrogant money-grubbers shoving their unpleasant ways down our throats, as though we actually need them. Good riddance.
"the government can't cherry-pick which companies can do whatever they like and which not..."
They can and they have. India recently banned several Chinese apps, either because they're creepy data collection efforts or because India is angry with China. They didn't make a new law to do that; they just listed some undesirable apps and told the companies to stop operating in India. They could always do that again. I wouldn't hold my breath though.
It is discriminatory for Facebook to have different rules for Europe vs India/US/Rest. But the world (India/US/Rest) should understand, only they are to blame.
This simply goes on to show how effective legislation can protect Citizen's right.
Kudos to GDPR which is not only protecting Europe but also is indirectly instrumental in protecting other parts of the world.
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