May 26, 2021
India has made new and stricter IT rules that require instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp to aid in identifying the ‘originator’ of messages. WhatsApp seeing this as a breach of their users privacy has petitioned in the Delhi High court against this act.
The petition challenges the constitutional validity of rules which will be effective from May 26th. The complaint was filed on 25th.
“Requiring messaging apps to ‘trace’ chats is equivalent to 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 WhatsApp spokesperson said.
BCCL
In Brazil, Diego Dzodan Facebook’s vice president for Latin America in 2016 was arrested after refusing to hand over WhatsApp messages that the local authorities alleged had been sent by drug dealers. He was later released with the judge deeming his arrest an ‘unlawful coercion’.
In India, Facebook’s managing director, Ajit Mohan, wasn’t arrested but was named in a petition to the Supreme Court on Delhi Riots in 2020.
And, most recently, Twitter’s offices in New Delhi and Gurgaon were raided as the police looked into the matter of the social media platform’s ‘manipulated media’ tag.
5 days ago
WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against the Indian government over the new IT Rules 2021 stating that the rules will compel the messaging platform to break privacy protections, Reuters reported earlier today. The filing comes a day after the deadline to comply with the new rules passed.
Download a copy of WhatsApp’s petition here.
A WhatsApp spokesperson confirmed this news with MediaNama saying that traceability “fundamentally undermines people’s right to privacy.”
Traceability mandate will break end-to-end encryption
In the lawsuit filed by WhatsApp in the Delhi High Court, the platform said that one of the provisions of the new rules is a violation of the privacy rights guaranteed by the Indian constitution. The provision in question is the traceability mandate which requires a significant social media intermediary providing services primarily in the nature of messaging to enable the identification of the first originator of a message, people familiar with the la
NEW DELHI: Digital activists and experts said that the manner in which the Delhi Police special cell went to serve a notice to Twitter offices on Monday was meant to “bully” the company and sends a bad message to tech companies looking to invest in India. Neither MEITY nor Delhi Police are empowered by any law to object to such labeling, technology lawyer Mishi Choudhary told TOI, adding that the government was acting as a bully.
According to Choudhary, the move also sends a bad message to tech companies looking to invest in India. This sends a message to the world that Digital India is closed for business. Rule of Law no longer applies and every rule in the book can be twisted to control information and settle political scores. As an investor, who wants to risk their money in such a volatile, unpredictable environment, she added.
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