New Delhi, April 26
Messaging service platform WhatsApp has told the Delhi High Court that it would stop operating in India if forced to break encryption of messages.
‘Trace origin of fake messages’
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology opposed the petition challenging the new IT rules, saying if the rules were not implemented, law enforcement agencies would have difficulty in tracing the origin of fake messages.
“As a platform we are saying, if we are told to break encryption, then WhatsApp goes,” its lawyer on Thursday told a Bench led by Acting Chief Justice Manmohan during hearing of petitions filed by WhatsApp and its parent company Meta (previously Facebook) challenging a provision of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. WhatsApp said people used its platform because of privacy on account of end-to-end encryption. Breaking the encryption would undermine the users’ trust as it would violate their fundamental rights to privacy and free speech, it said.
WhatsApp and Meta have challenged Rule 4(2) of the Information Technology Rules, 2021, which says ‘significant’ social media intermediaries — those with more than five million registered users — must be able to identify the first originator of any information on its platform when ordered by a court or a competent authority.
However, such information will be sought only for offences related to national security, public order, or those related to rape, sexually explicit material or child sexual abuse which attract a minimum five-year imprisonment. It clarifies that an order of this nature will not be issued, if less intrusive means can identify the originator of the information.
The company is also aggrieved by the requirement of storing millions of messages for years. “We will have to keep a complete chain and we don’t know which messages will be asked to be decrypted. It means millions and millions of messages will have to be stored for a number of years,” WhatsApp submitted. Noting that privacy rights were not absolute and somewhere balance had to be struck, the Bench posted the matter for further hearing on August 14.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has opposed the petition challenging newly amended IT rules on the ground that WhatsApp has already violated the fundamental rights of the users in India by denying them any dispute resolution rights in the country.
The ministry submitted that if the IT rules were not implemented, law enforcement agencies would have difficulty in tracing the origin of fake messages and such messages would percolate to other platforms thereby disturbing peace and harmony in society further leading to public order issues. /Agencies
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