South Africa’s Information Regulator is briefing attorneys to prepare an opinion on the way forward in terms of litigation after not receiving any agreement from WhatsApp to revise its privacy policy in line with that of the standard used in the European Union (UN).

The regulator requested the chat application revise its policy ahead of the requirement for WhatsApp users to accept new terms and conditions for using the chat application by May 15.

“It remains the regulator’s assertion that the Protection of Personal Information Act (Popia) has a privacy regime which is very similar to the EU regime, and therefore believes that WhatsApp should adopt the EU policy in South Africa, and other countries in the global south that have similar regimes,” said Information Regulator chairperson Advocate Pansy Tlakula in a statement.

The regulator has also asked the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services to request Facebook South Africa and WhatsApp to appear in Parliament on this matter.

“We are obligated as the regulator to ensure the protection of personal information of all South African citizens and monitor compliance of the Popia by responsible parties. We therefore will take this matter further and seek legal opinions and advocate for collaborated efforts.”

The regulator believes that there are significant differences between the policies for users living in Europe compared with the one for users living outside of Europe, with two privacy policies for WhatsApp users despite operating in different legal and regulatory environments.

In line with the belief that organisations should work together to hold Facebook accountable, the regulator on May 8 engaged the Global Privacy Assembly to obtain its view or position on the compliance of the revised policy with generally acceptable data protection principles and whether it intends to engage WhatsApp on this matter.

Further, the Reseau Africain Des Autorite De Protection Des Donness Personelles (RAPDP), an African network of data protection authorities, engaged robustly with Facebook on April 9 on the matter.

The network has made strong recommendations to WhatsApp requesting them to bring the WhatsApp privacy policy in line with Africa data protection laws.

RAPDP emphasised that the privacy policy should be applicable to Africa in line with those applicable to other regions, particularly the European region.