In a significant development, WhatsApp has sued the Indian government for seeking to block new IT regulations which is set to come into force on Wednesday (May 26), saying that the new policy of the Indian government will end privacy protections of the California-based Facebook unit.
According to report, in its legal complaint, WhatsApp has requested the Delhi High Court to declare that one of the new rules is a violation of privacy rights as per the Constitution of India. Whatsapp has argued that the rule requires social media companies to identify the "first originator of information" when asked by government authorities.
“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. 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," a WhatsApp spokesperson said in response to WION question on it suing Indian government in Delhi HC.
It is to be noted that the new rule requires WhatsApp to provide information only about the people credibly accused of wrongdoing but the Facebook-owned firm said it is impossible to do this alone. According to Whatsapp, messages are end-to-end encrypted and in order to follow the rules of the Indian government it would need to break encryption for receivers, as well as "originators", of messages.
It is to be noted that social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and Instagram may face a ban in India if they do not comply with the new Intermediary Guidelines set by the Indian government. The deadline to accept the guidelines set by the government ended on May 25.
However, none of the social media platforms have complied with the new regulations yet that were issued by the government three months ago.
In February 2021, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had given a three-month time to the social platforms to comply with the new IT rules.
Meanwhile, Facebook on Tuesday said it is working to implement operational processes and aims to comply with that. The social media giant added that it continues to discuss a few of the issues which need more engagement with the government.
Facebook remains committed to people's ability to freely and safely express themselves on our platform, the spokesperson added.
