Also in this letter:
■ Attrition, variable pay, moonlighting: IT firms grapple with many issues
■ Delhi HC dismisses WhatsApp, Facebook appeals against CCI probe
■ Twitter whistleblower to meet with US Senate panel on Sept 13
No conclusive proof that Pegasus was used but case made out: SC
The Supreme Court said earlier today that its technical committee found no conclusive proof that the Pegasus spyware was used in the 29 phones it examined, though it did find unspecified malware in five of them.
Yes, but: The union government did not cooperate with the investigation, the committee said in its report. It also recommended laws to protect citizens from illegal surveillance.
There’s a case: Ruling on a batch of 12 petitions, which sought an independent probe into the alleged illegal use of Pegasus, the court said:
“There has been no specific denial of any of the facts averred by the petitioners by the respondent – Union of India. There has only been an omnibus and vague denial in the ‘limited affidavit’ filed by the respondent, which cannot be sufficient. In such circumstances, we have no option but to accept the prima facie case made out by the petitioners to examine the allegations made”.
Backstory: In July 2021, the Pegasus Project revealed that 180 journalists had been targeted using Pegasus – which is built by Israeli company NSO Group and sold only to governments – in countries like India, Mexico, Hungary, Morocco and France, among others. Other potential targets included human rights defenders, academics, businesspeople, lawyers, doctors, union leaders, journalists, diplomats, politicians and several heads of states.
In October 2021, the Supreme Court set up a committee to look into whether Pegasus was used illegally to infect the phones of opposition politicians, judges, journalists, activists and others in India.
News portal The Wire reported that more than 142 Indians were potentially targeted with Pegasus, including the Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, election strategist Prashant Kishor, two serving union ministers and 40 journalists.
Attrition, variable pay, moonlighting: IT firms grapple with many issues
Variable pay or performance-linked incentives for tech professionals, moonlighting, and receding tailwinds brought along by Covid-19 have put Indian information technology (IT) firms in a spot of bother.
Payouts cut: Variable pay has become a severe headache of late, with major IT firms grappling with whether or not to withhold employees’ performance-linked salary component.
Wipro was the first among the top four Indian IT majors to announce it was holding back the variable pay for mid and senior-level employees for the first quarter (Q1) of FY23 owing to poor operating margin figures.
Others follow suit: TCS first delayed the Q1 performance bonus or variable compensation payout by a month for certain employees. It later reversed its decision and said it would pay 100% of variable pay for Q1 to its more than 600,000 employees.
Infosys, meanwhile, gave out only 70% of variable pay on average for the April-June quarter.
No moonlighting: Recently, Swiggy introduced a Moonlighting policy, under which full-time employees can take up external projects pro-bono or for money, based on internal approvals.
But Wipro chairman Rishad Premji said he considers moonlighting in the tech industry to be cheating.
His concerns stem from sky-high attrition levels at IT firms. During Q1FY23, the top four IT majors recorded double-digit attrition figures.
Delhi HC dismisses WhatsApp and Meta appeals against CCI probe
The Delhi High Court dismissed a petition by Facebook Inc (now Meta) and WhatsApp, which sought to quash the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) probe into the instant messaging platform’s updated privacy policy of 2021.
Driving the news: A bench comprising Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad said that the single judge’s order was well-reasoned and that WhatsApp’s appeals were devoid of merit.
Meta had challenged the regulator’s order in June, arguing that there was not even prima facie material for the CCI to launch a probe. However, the CCI brushed aside its claims, saying that the investigation concerned WhatsApp’s anti-competitive data sharing practices with Facebook, which could harm users.
Twitter whistleblower to meet with Senate panel on Sept 13
The US Senate Judiciary committee will hold a hearing on September 13 with Twitter’s former security chief Peiter Zatko to discuss allegations from his whistleblower complaint that the social media company misled regulators.
Catch up quick: Earlier this week, Zatko accused Twitter of making misleading statements about its defences against hackers and spam accounts.
In an 84-page complaint, Zatko, a famed hacker widely known as “Mudge,” made numerous claims, including that Twitter prioritised user growth over reducing spam, with executives eligible to win individual bonuses of as much as $10 million tied to increases in daily users.
EU watchdogs to probe Twitter: Meanwhile, EU watchdogs are launching privacy probes against Twitter following Zatko’s revelations. According to Techcrunch, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) and France’s CNIL are the two European regulators following up with the whistleblower’s complaint.
Tweet of the day
ETtech Done Deals
■ Enterprise gig platform Awign raised $15 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Bertelsmann India Investments and Amicus Capital Partners. Mynavi Corporation and existing investors like Unitus Ventures and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) also participated in the round. Awign claims to have witnessed a 10x growth in the last two years and plans to use the funds raised in this round to expand its services in the US and the Middle East.
■ Data privacy startup Privado raised $14 million in a Series A round co-led by Insight Partners and Sequoia Capital India. Founded in 2020 by Jasdeep Cheema, Prashant Mahajan, and Vaibhav Antil, Privado addresses businesses’ privacy issues. The company connects with source code management tools like GitHub and provides instant visibility into data flows to privacy teams.
■ Edtech startup Jackett raised $1 million in seed funding led by Forge Ventures, Entrepreneur First and Epic Angels Network. Angel investors such as Carousell cofounder Siu Rui Quek and OnLoop’s Projjal Ghatak also participated in the round. It will use the funds to improve its operating system and enter emerging markets.
Today’s ETtech Top 5 newsletter was curated by Zaheer Merchant in Mumbai and Ruchir Vyas in New Delhi. Graphics and illustrations by Rahul Awasthi.
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