Keypoints:
- WhatsApp files a legal complaint in Delhi against the Government of India seeking to block regulations coming into force on Wednesday.
- WhatsApp says messages on its platform are end to end encrypted. Hence, to comply with the law it will have to break encryption for the ones who send and receive messages.
A lawsuit has been filed by WhatsApp against the Indian government over the new digital rules which take effect today. It has said that these would compel it to break privacy protection to users.
On Tuesday, WhatsApp has filed its petition against the rules that requires it to ‘trace’ the origin of messages sent on the platform, which it says it is violation of privacy.
In a statement, WhatsApp which has nearly 400 million users has said that, “Requiring messaging apps to ‘trace’ chats is the equivalent of asking us to keep a fingerprint of every single message sent on WhatsApp, which would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermines people’s right to privacy.”
A spokesperson of California based Facebook unit has said that, “We have consistently joined civil society and experts around the world in opposing requirements that would violate the privacy of our users. In the meantime, we will also continue to engage with the government of India on practical solutions aimed at keeping people safe, including responding to valid legal requests for the information available to us.”
The petition has asked the High Court to declare that one of the new rule is a violation of privacy under the Indian Constitution as it requires social media sites to identify the “first originator of information” when asked for it.
WhatsApp has said that the messages on its platform is end to end encrypted and hence, to comply with this law, it would have to break encryption for the ones who send and receive messages. It also strongly argues against traceability of messages. Officials have said that “other parts of the government” have also taken the issue with the traceability requirement.
Officials have also pointed out that WhatsApps’ end to end encryption was designed so that nobody else could see the message other than the receiver.This is the exact opposite of traceability, which would reveal who sent what to whom.
They have also added that traceability could force private companies to store and collect who-said-what and who-shared-what for billions of messages sent each day. This means that collecting more data than they need only for the purpose of turning it over to law enforcement agencies.
Social Media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter were given three months to comply with the new digital rules that require them to appoint a compliance officer in India, set up a grievance response mechanism and take down content within 36 hours of a legal order. The sites are also required to use automated processes to take down offensive content.
