DUJ Welcome Supreme Court Order on Mobile Privacy

The Delhi Union of Journalists and the National Association of Journalists welcome the Supreme Court Order upholding individual privacy and restraining the Enforcement Directorate from accessing and copying content from various electronic devices seized during raids. We applaud this move to protect citizens’ private, personal and professional communications.

In this context we condemn the Kerala Police’s action against journalist Aniru Asokan of Madhyamam daily. Asokan has been sent a notice demanding that he provide his mobile to the Police for investigation after he exposed a data leak by a government department.

The DUJ and NAJ express our solidarity with the aggrieved journalist as well as the Kerala Union of Working Journalists in this matter which is protesting against the police demand.

The Supreme Court Order, by Justices Abhay S. Oka and Pankaj Mithal, comes in the case of the Future Gaming company. The case will be heard in February along with connected cases including petitions filed by Amazon India employees against ED demands for their electronic devices and similar demands by NewsClick employees.

The homes of over 70 NewsClick employees, most of them journalists, were raided in October 2023 and some 300 laptops, hard discs, mobiles and other devices seized.

NewsClick has asked for return of the devices and for the Court to frame guidelines on seizure of devices.

We urge the Court to reiterate the right to privacy, including the privacy of digital communication, in its final Order and to ensure that devices are returned intact to their rightful owners.