WhatsApp Files Lawsuit, Indian Govt. Responds

Social media giant WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in Delhi against the Indian government seeking to block regulations coming into force on Wednesday. WhatsApp challenged the government regarding rules of identifying the ‘first originator’ of the message which would mean end of privacy.

The petition asked the Delhi High Court to declare that one of the new rules is a violation of privacy rights in India’s constitution as it requires the social media companies to identify the “first originator of information” when authorities demand it.

The new rules specify that WhatsApp should reveal only people credibly accused of wrongdoing, the company says it cannot do it only in a specific case. WhatsApp said that it would have to break its promise of end-to-end encryption to comply with the new law of unmasking the “originators” of particular messages.

WhatsApp has nearly 400 million users in India and said that tracing chats of its users is equivalent to keeping fingerprints of every single message and that would break the end-to-end encryption policy. “This would fundamentally undermine people’s right to privacy,” it said.

WhatsApp further said that it will continue to engage with the Indian government on practical solutions.

Meanwhile, a government official said that WhatsApp could find a way to track originators of disinformation, being demanded by the Narendra Modi’s government, and that the company was not being asked to break encryption.

A statement from the Ministry of Electronics and IT said, ‘Government of India respects the Right of Privacy and has no intention to violate it when WhatsApp is required to disclose the origin of a particular message. Such requirements are only in case when a particular message is required for prevention, investigation or punishment of serious offences such as sexually explicit content. At one end, WhatsApp seeks to mandate a privacy policy wherein it will share data of all its user with its parent company, Facebook.’

‘On other hand, WhatsApp makes every effort to refuse enactment of Intermediary Guidelines necessary to uphold law & order & curb fake news. Any operations being run in India are subject to the law of the land. WhatsApp’s refusal to comply with the guidelines is a clear act of defiance of a measure whose intent can certainly not be doubted. As a significant social media intermediary, WhatsApp seeks safe harbour protection as per provisions of the IT Act. However, in a befuddling act, they seek to avoid responsibility and refuse to enact the very steps which permit them a safe harbour provision. WhatsApp’s attempt to portray Intermediary Guidelines of India as contrary to Right to privacy is misguided. Contrarily in India, privacy is a fundamental right subject to reasonable restrictions. Rule 4(2) (to trace first originator) is example of such a restriction. ‘

The lawsuit heightened a growing struggle between Modi’s government and tech giants Facebook, Google parent Alphabet and microblogging platform Twitter.

Tension escalated after police visit to Twitter offices in Delhi early this week. The micro-blogging site had labelled posts by a spokesman for the dominant party and others as containing “manipulated media”, saying forged content was included.

The Indian government has also pressurised the social media giants to remove not only what it said was misinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging India, but also some criticism of the government’s response to the crisis.

The response of the companies to the government’s new rules has been a matter of intense speculation since they were unveiled in February.