IndianGovernment’s new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and DigitalMedia Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, has become a debatable issue worldwide. With asection of society in India supporting the new rules, the others have criticizedIndian Government saying that the new rules are again a tactic of theModi-led-BJP govt to suppress the voices of dissent.
Inthe latest development as deadline to accept the new guidelines have alreadyended, Facebook-owned WhatsApp today filed a lawsuit against the Indiangovernment in the Delhi High Court, saying that the provision to trace chats iscompletely against their concept of end-to-end encryption.
Itfurther added that the provision will allow private firms as they can collect andstore ‘who-said-what and who-shared-what’ data for billions of messages dailyjust for the requirement of law enforcement agencies.
AWhatsApp spokesperson said that requiring messaging apps to "trace"chats is the equivalent of asking us to keep a fingerprint of every singlemessage sent on WhatsApp.
"Itwould break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermines people's rightto privacy. We have consistently joined civil society and experts around theworld in opposing requirements that would violate the privacy of ourusers," the spokesperson stressed.
Meanwhile,the company also emphasized on the fact that they will continue to engage withthe GOI on practical and logical solutions aimed at keeping people’s data safe,including responding to valid legal requests for the information available tothem.
However,the Indian government has yet not reacted to the lawsuit. The tussle betweenTwitter, WhatsApp and Facebook and the Union government seems to have reachedits nadir, with cops raiding Twitter offices in the pandemic earlier this weekover the ToolKit controversy.
WhatsApphas been continuously raising objections saying that new rules infringe onusers' privacy. Besides, WhatsApp has also gone ahead with implementing itscontroversial user privacy policy from May 15, clearing stating that "wewill maintain this approach until at least the forthcoming PDP (personal dataprotection) law comes into effect".
Whenthe concept of "traceability" was first proposed in early 2019,dozens of organisations wrote to the Indian government about how such aprovision would violate the privacy of Indian users.
TheIT rules published earlier this year, in addition to calling for"traceability" risk criminal penalties for non-compliance.
WhatsApphas consistently opposed legal action that would break end-to-end encryption.The company is currently fighting the same before the Supreme Court of Brazilon a similar matter.
"Wealso do not believe traceability can be imposed in a way that cannot be spoofedor modified, leading to new ways for people to be framed for things they didnot say or do. Such massive data collection also makes messaging platformsinherently less secure by opening up more avenues for hacking," WhatsApphad said earlier.
Asper the new rules, the social media platforms will have to remove offendingcontent within 36 hours after a government directive or a legal order. The newrules mandate that the intermediaries, including social media intermediaries,must establish a grievance redressal mechanism for receiving/resolvingcomplaints from the users or victims.
Onthe user privacy policy, the Facebook-owned platform with over 400 millionusers in the country has defended its position, saying that it continues toengage with the government to resolve the issue.
WhatsAppsaid it has sent a reply to the notice by MeitY after the ministry directed theFacebook-owned platform to withdraw its controversial user privacy policy.