New Delhi. WhatsApp has refused to remove encryption in the Delhi High Court on Friday. Not only this, WhatsApp has also said that if forced to do so, the company will stop its work in India. Actually, Meta’s company has challenged the IT Rules, 2021. The special thing is that instant messaging app WhatsApp has more than 40 crore users in India.
The company says that user privacy is protected through end to end encryption. Through this, it is ensured that only the sender of the message and the recipient can know the content inside. Tejas Karia, appearing in the court on behalf of the company, told the court that as a platform we are saying that if we are asked to break the encryption, then WhatsApp will leave India.
In a rule of 2021 Information Technology (IT), it has been said that social media and messaging apps should make a provision to trace the chats of the users and identify the first sender of any message. During the hearing of the case, the court asked whether there are such rules in other countries also? In response to which WhatsApp said that there is no such rule anywhere in the world. Not even in Brazil.
As a platform we are saying, if we are asked to break encryption, WhatsApp will go away. Meta’s lawyer Karia told the bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan Singh and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora. He said this requirement was against users’ privacy and was introduced without consultation. Karia said that this rule would require WhatsApp to store millions of messages for years. A necessity that does not exist anywhere else in the world. He said that we have to keep a complete chain and we do not know which messages will be asked to decrypt. This means that millions upon millions of messages will have to be stored for many years.
He emphasized that the original Information Technology Act does not provide for breaking encryption. After this the bench asked whether such a law exists anywhere else in the world. Have these issues been raised anywhere in the world? You have never been asked to share information anywhere in the world? Even in South America? Curia replied no, not even in Brazil.
The next hearing in this case will be on August 14.
,
Tag: Delhi High Court, WhatsApp
first published : April 26, 2024, 4:44 pm IST
