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Facebook-owned WhatsApp is suing the Indian government, demanding that its new regulations allow the authorities to conduct mass surveillance and undermine user privacy.
The news platform said on Wednesday that it had filed a lawsuit in the Delhi High Court. It argues that India’s new “traceability” rules require technology companies to hand over details about the sender of private information, which violates citizens’ constitutional privacy rights.
in a Blog postWhatsApp believes that traceability rules will force it to break the end-to-end encryption that hides user information and pave the way for “a new type of large-scale surveillance.” The traceability rules were announced in February as part of new social media regulations that will take effect on Wednesday.
WhatsApp said: “Civil society and technology experts around the world have always believed that the requirement to’track’ private information will break end-to-end encryption and lead to real abuse.” “WhatsApp is committed to protecting the privacy of people’s personal information, and we will continue. Do everything we can to do this within Indian law.”
The lawsuit was originally reported by Reuters. The new regulations will enable the government to delete posts it considers offensive, decrypt messages and regulate Internet streaming services and online news.
These requirements have exacerbated tensions with social media companies. Twitter this week referred to the tweets of the country’s spokespersons of the ruling party as “manipulative media,” which subsequently caused an uproar in New Delhi. The anti-terrorist police visited the company’s office on Monday after receiving a complaint about the tag.
Last week, India’s Ministry of IT instructed social media companies to curb false positives by deleting “coronavirus names, all content that mentions or implies’Indian variants’”.
The Indian government estimates that India is the largest market for WhatsApp, with 530 million users. In the second half of last year, the company received approval to launch its payment service in India due to delays.
Jayanth Kolla, a technical analyst at Convergence Catalyst, a Bangalore-based consulting firm, said: “The government has let go.” “There seems to be no middle ground.”
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