Mumbai: Social media profiles of users need to be linked with Aadhaar numbers to check the circulation of fake, defamatory and pornographic content as also anti-national and terror material, the Supreme Court in India was told on Monday.

The suggestion was made by the Tamil Nadu government which is facing resistance from Facebook Inc on the ground that sharing of 12-digit Aadhaar number, the Biometric Unique Identity, would violate the privacy policy of users.
Attorney General KK Venugopal, appearing for the state government, said: “The linking of social media profiles of the users with the Aadhaar was needed to check fake news, defamatory articles, pornographic materials, anti-national and terror contents in the online media.”
He said the social media giant claims that its Whatsapp messages are end-to-end encrypted but there is a Professor from IIT who says that the originator of a message can be traced.

The top law officer opposed a plea of Facebook seeking transfer of cases pending before the high courts of Madras, Bombay, and Madhya Pradesh to the apex court seeking to link of social media profiles of users with Aadhaar number.

Facebook Inc said that it cannot share the Aadhaar number with a third party as the content on its instant messaging Whatsapp was end-to-end encrypted and even they do not have access to it.