WhatsApp to Delhi HC: Govt’s new rules means end to privacy

New Delhi: WhatsApp has entered into a legal battle with the Indian government as the tech giant filed a legal complaint against the latter in Delhi. The complaint is filed seeking a block on regulations which come into effect on Wednesday. The experts believe the new rules would compel the California-based Facebook unit to break privacy protections.

As reported by the Reuters, the lawsuit requests the Delhi High Court to declare that one of the new regulations is in the violation of ‘Right to Privacy’ which is a part of India’s constitution. The company is talking about the one which requires social media companies to identify the “first originator of information” when govt. ask them to.

Although the law requires WhatsApp to unmask only the people who are credibly accused of wrongdoing, the company says it cannot do that as an exception in some cases. The reason being the end-to-end encryption followed by the company which is applicable to all the users. The company clarifies that to comply with the law, it would have to break the encryption for receivers, as well as “originators”, of certain messages.

The sources familiar with the matter declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the issue. WhatsApp has nearly 400 million users in India and the company’s spokesperson declined to comment. The date for when the court will review this request is not known as of now.

This lawsuit will escalate the struggle between PM Narendra Modi`s government and tech giants which include Facebook, Google parent Alphabet and Twitter as India is one of their key global growth markets.

This is also a development after earlier this week Delhi Police raided the offices of Twitter in NCR. The micro-blogging service had labelled posts by a BJP leader and others as containing “manipulated media”, saying forged content was included.

The government asked the tech companies to remove what is described as misinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging India, while also asking the removal of certain posts which contain some criticism of the government’s response to the ongoing crisis.

Tech companies’ response to the new rules have been highly speculative since the day Central govt. unveiled them in February, while giving a period of 90 days to implement them.

The Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, made by the Ministry of Information Technology, mentions “significant social media intermediaries” will lose protection from lawsuits and criminal prosecution if they fail to comply to the new regulations.

All the social media giants involved have invested heavily in Indian market, but their officials worry that the increasingly heavy-handed regulations by the Indian government could jeopardize those prospects.

Some of the other requirements in new rules include Indian citizens to be appointed to the key compliance roles in the organisations, 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.

Facebook has said that it agrees with most of the provisions but is still looking to negotiate some aspects. Twitter, which has come under the most fire for failing to take down posts by government critics, declined to comment.

Some in the industry are hoping for a delay in the introduction of the new rules while such objections are heard.

The WhatsApp complaint cites a 2017 Indian Supreme Court ruling supporting privacy in a case known as Puttaswamy, the people familiar with it said. The court found then that privacy must be preserved except in cases where legality, necessity and proportionality all weighed against it. WhatsApp argues that the law fails all three of those tests, starting with the lack of explicit parliamentary backing.

Experts have backed WhatsApp`s arguments. “The new traceability and filtering requirements may put an end to end-to-end encryption in India,” Stanford Internet Observatory scholar Riana Pfefferkorn wrote in March.

Other court challenges to the new rules are already pending in Delhi and elsewhere. In one, journalists argue that the extension of technology regulations to digital publishers, including the imposition of decency and taste standards, is unsupported by the underlying law.