The Madras High Court released the daily order (available below) for the WhatsApp traceability case on July 5, the last hearing for which took place on June 27. The Deputy Secretary to Government, IT Department of Tamil Nadu filed a report on June 26 with details of data requests it made to social media companies — Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Google and YouTube. The social media companies were supposed to have replied to this report by July 17. The petitioner in the case, Antony Clement Rubin, told MediaNama that Facebook and WhatsApp have submitted their responses. MediaNama is awaiting confirmation on others' response. The next hearing is on July 24, 2019. Senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Arvind Datar are expected to appear for WhatsApp. Here are the details from the government's report, as extracted in the daily order. Please note that the court order doesn't mention the time period during which these requests were made. [caption id="attachment_203060" align="aligncenter" width="819"] * NB: There appears to be an error in the daily order. Under 'Content Requests', the 'Requests Sent' and 'Furnished' columns should be switched. MediaNama is awaiting a confirmation from Facebook about the same.[/caption] The court had, in the last hearing, approved Internet Freedom Foundation’s (IFF) plea to act as an intervener in the ongoing case, that is now examining ways in which cybercrime might be curbed with the assistance of social media companies. The hearing had lasted for more than an hour and saw representation from the government of Tamil Nadu,…
