Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday clarified that the government has no plans to link Aadhaar with social media account. Ina written reply Prasad said that the data of Aadhaar is completely secure andit is audited frequently. He added that under Section 69 A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, the government has the right to block accounts in the country in matters of public interest.

The number of URLs that the government has blocked from 2016-2019--633 (2016),published,385 (2017), 2,799 (2018), and 3,433 (2019).AIMIM leader Asauddin Owaisi also asked the Union Minister on the cyber attack by an Israeli spyware Pegasus targetting Indian journalists and human rights activists using Whats App. Prasad replied that the government has taken cognizance of the fact that spyware tried to attack the phones of 121 people of India,adding that it is committed to the Right to Privacy of its citizens.  Cert-In had issued an alert on vulnerability in WhatsApp following which the messaging service had replied that such loopholes can't be used to launch an attack, he said.

Prasad replied that the government has asked Whats App to explain about the Israeli spyware Pegasus attack on its users using its platform. WhatsApp then updated Cert-In that the full impact of this attack could not be known. It also reported that there was a possibility that it tried to reach 121 people. "We asked WhatsApp to provide a detailed report. Weare bringing a bill for the private data security of citizens," Prasadadded.

Earlier too, Prasad had said that the government iscommitted to protecting the privacy of all Indian citizens over the WhatsAppspyware issue. During Zee News' India Ka DNA Conclave, Prasad had said,"There are 121 crore mobile phones in India if there is anything wrong wewill take action."

It may be recalled that WhatsApp has filed a legal suit in aUS Federal Court against an Israeli firm - NSO Group – alleging that it wasbehind cyber-attacks that infected devices with malicious software. In itscomplaint against the Israeli firm, WhatsApp claimed that the firm installedspyware on users' phones and targeted human rights defenders, journalists,political dissidents, diplomats and government officials. WhatsApp claimed thatIndian journalists and human rights activists were among those globally spiedupon by unnamed entities using an Israeli spyware Pegasus.

WhatsApp accused the NSO Group of sending malware to roughly1,400 mobile phones for ''surveillance.'' The Israeli firm, which makessoftware for surveillance, has rejected these allegations. In its complaint,WhatsApp claimed that the NSO Group "developed their malware in order toaccess messages and other communications after they were decrypted on targetdevices".

WhatsApp also alleged that the NSO Group created variousWhatsApp accounts and caused the malicious code to be transmitted over theWhatsApp servers in April and May. "We believe this attack targeted atleast 100 members of civil society, which is an unmistakable pattern of abuse,"WhatsApp had said in a statement. The affected users are from severalcountries, including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico, according tothe lawsuit.

WhatsApp said that it is seeking a permanent injunctionbanning NSO from using its service. The firm, which was acquired by Facebook in2014, said it was the first time an encrypted messaging provider had takenlegal action of this kind. It may be recalled that the facebook-owned messagingservices promotes itself as a "secure" communications app becausemessages are end-to-end encrypted. This means they should only be displayed ina legible form on the sender or recipient's device.