NEW DELHI • WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in Delhi against the Indian government, seeking to block regulations coming into force yesterday that experts say would compel Facebook's messaging app to break privacy protections, sources said.
The case asks the Delhi High Court to declare that one of the new information technology (IT) rules is a violation of privacy rights in India's Constitution since it requires social media companies to identify the "first originator of information" when the authorities demand it, people familiar with the lawsuit told Reuters.
The WhatsApp lawsuit escalates a growing struggle between Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government and tech giants including Facebook, Google's parent Alphabet and Twitter in one of their key global growth markets.
Tensions rose after police visited Twitter's offices this week. The micro-blogging service had labelled posts by a spokesman for India's dominant party and others as containing "manipulated media", saying forged content was included.
New Delhi has also pressed tech companies to remove what it has described as misinformation on the Covid-19 pandemic ravaging India, and some criticism of the government's response to the crisis, which is claiming thousands of lives daily.
While the new law only requires WhatsApp, which has half a billion users in India, to unmask people credibly accused of wrongdoing, it says it cannot in practice do that alone.
WhatsApp says that because messages are encrypted end-to-end, it would have to break encryption for receivers of messages as well as the originators to comply with the new law.
"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," WhatsApp said in a statement.
The sources familiar with the lawsuit declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.
A government official said WhatsApp could find a way to track originators of disinformation, a longstanding stance of Mr Modi's administration, and that the US company was not being asked to break encryption.
WhatsApp said it would continue to engage with the government. Its Indian operations were continuing to operate as normal yesterday. India's technology ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit also comes at a time many Indians have begun using rival messaging apps such as Signal and Telegram after WhatsApp introduced a new privacy policy earlier this year which allows it to share some data with Facebook and other firms.
While Signal and Telegram downloads have surged in India, neither app commands as massive a user base as WhatsApp. They have yet to comment on India's demand for traceability.
The response of the companies to the new rules has been a subject of intense speculation since they were unveiled in February. India's new Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code designates "significant social media intermediaries" as standing to lose protection from lawsuits and criminal prosecution if they fail to adhere to the code.
REUTERS
