WhatsApp on Wednesday (May 26) filed a lawsuit in the Delhi High Court against the government’s new IT rules which are slated to comes into effect from May 26, saying these would compel it to break privacy protections to users.
The Facebook-owned messaging service filed its petition against the rules that will require it to “trace” the origin of particular messages sent on the service.
“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 on Wednesday.
“We have consistently joined civil society and experts around the world in opposing requirements that would violate the privacy of our users. In the meantime, we will also continue to engage with the government of India on practical solutions aimed at keeping people safe, including responding to valid legal requests for the information available to us,” a spokesperson of the California-based Facebook unit said.
According to Reuters, WhatsApp in its legal complaint requested the Delhi High Court to declare that one of the new rules is a violation of privacy rights as per the Constitution of India since the new rule requires social media companies to identify the “first originator of information” when asked by government authorities.
WhatsApp says messages on its platform are end-to-end encrypted, so to comply with the law it would have break encryption for those who send and receive messages.
As per the report, the WhatsApp petition cites a 2017 Supreme Court ruling that said privacy must be preserved except in cases where legality, necessity and proportionality all weighed against it.
On February 25, the Centre framed the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Codes) Rules 2021, in the exercise of powers under section 87 (2) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and in superssion of the earlier Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules 2011, which comes into effect from May 26.
Among the new rules are requirements that big social media firms appoint Indian citizens to key compliance roles, remove content within 36 hours of a legal order, and set up a mechanism to respond to complaints. They must also use automated processes to take down pornography.
The Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, promulgated by the ministry of information technology, designates “significant social media intermediaries” as standing to lose protection from lawsuits and criminal prosecution if they fail to adhere to the code.
Facebook has said that it agrees with most of the provisions but is still looking to negotiate some aspects.
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