Achi news desk-
GUWAHATI: WhatsApp has informed the Delhi High Court that the messaging platform will cease operations in India if it is forced to compromise the encryption of messages. The company, owned by Meta, emphasized that end-to-end encryption preserves user privacy by limiting access to message content to the sender and recipient only.
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“As a platform, we say, if we are told to break the encryption, then WhatsApp goes,” Tejas Karia, who appears on WhatsApp, told the division bench.
Kariya said people use WhatsApp because of the privacy features it offers. WhatsApp has more than 400 million users in India, making it the largest market for the platform. “India (is) a country that is at the forefront… you are leading the world in terms of how people and businesses have adopted messaging,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a virtual speech at Meta’s annual event last year
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WhatsApp and Facebook’s parent company Meta are challenging the Information Technology (Digital Media Intermediary Guidelines and Code of Ethics) Rules 2021, which require them to monitor chats and identify the origin of messages. The companies claim that the law weakens encryption and violates the privacy protection of users under the Indian constitution.
The messaging platform claimed that the rules harm the encryption of the content as well as the privacy of the users. It also violates the fundamental rights of users guaranteed under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India. “There is no such rule anywhere else in the world. Not even in Brazil. We will have to maintain a complete chain and we do not know which messages will be asked to be decrypted. This means that millions and millions of messages will have to be preserved for several years,” said Caria.
However, Kirtiman Singh, appearing for the central government, defended the regulations, stressing the need to trace the originals of the messages. Singh argued that such a mechanism is essential in today’s environment. The Delhi High Court has listed the petitions of WhatsApp and below for hearing on August 14. The commission said that privacy rights are not absolute. "Somewhere you have to strike a balance."
