Zoom: Supreme Court has ‘good news’ for Zoom app in India – Times of India

The Supreme Court has closed a public interest litigation (PIL) that sought a ban on the usage of the ‘Zoom‘ video conferencing platform. The PIL, which was filed in 2020, claimed that the app breaches users’ privacy.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and MM Sundresh closed the petition after advocate Arvind Datar appearing for Zoom said 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 said.

PIL highlighted privacy issue
The top court was hearing a petition filed by Harsh Chugh who sought a ban on the usage of Zoom app in India until the formulation of appropriate legislation, claiming that the app breaches privacy. The plea said that the platform poses a threat to the privacy of the individuals using it and also breaches cybersecurity.
The PIL also claimed that the Zoom app is not safe because it does not have end-to-end encryption and is violating the Information Technology Act, 2000, and Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Interception, Monitoring and Decryption of Information) Rules, 2009.

The CEO of ZoomVideo Communications has already apologised publicly and accepted the app to be faulty in terms of providing a secure environment digitally which is against the norms of cybersecurity, the plea said.
Zoom layoffs
The development comes a week after Zoom announced job cuts. Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, said that the company is laying off 1,300 employees, which translates to about 15% of its staff. The company CEO cites “uncertainty of the global economy, and its effect on our customers” as the reason for layoffs. He said that Zoom grew 3x in size in 24 months to manage the increasing demand for a solution so that people remain connected during the Covid-19 pandemic.