Facebook-owned company WhatsApp has sued the Indian government on Wednesday May 2021. The Lawsuit filed in Delhi High Court attempts to stop the government from enforcing the rules instructed to the company at the beginning of this year. Indian government wants WhatsApp messages to be “traceable” whereas all messages in the app are encrypted.
The instructions by the government undermine the privacy of billions of people who use WhatsApp for communication purposes and will affect their security.
“Civil society and technical experts around the world have consistently argued that a requirement to ‘trace’ private messages would break end-to-end encryption and lead to real abuse,”
“WhatsApp is committed to protecting the privacy of people’s personal messages and we will continue to do all we can within the laws of India to do so.” a WhatsApp spokesman said.
This rule was initially proposed in February by Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s law and information technology minister. The aim is to take down posts government deemed unlawful. The traceable database of all messages sent by WhatsApp users will allow the government to keep a close eye on individual conversations.
WhatsApp on numerous occasions has categorically cleared its stance about not watching conversations or hold any information about user data as the messages sent within the app are end-to-end encrypted. This allows users to communicate securely and privately without worrying about their information leakage.
Ref: Being Guru
