WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit against the Indian government. The company wants to block the application of new user privacy regulations that came into force on 26 May. Market experts claim these new regulations would compel Facebook’s messaging app to break privacy protection, Reuters reports, citing unnamed industry sources. WhatsApp currently has around 0.5 billion users in India.
The case asks the Delhi High Court to declare that one of the new IT rules is a violation of privacy rights in India's constitution, since it requires social media companies to identify the "first originator of information" when authorities demand it, said people familiar with the lawsuit.
While the new law only requires WhatsApp to unmask people credibly accused of wrongdoing, the company claims it cannot in practice do that alone. WhatsApp says that because messages are encrypted end-to-end it would have to break encryption for receivers of messages as well as the originators to comply with the new law.
"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.
WhatsApp reports it plans to continue to engage with the government.
