Will WhatsApp leave India?
The world's leading instant-messaging platform, WhatsApp has threatened to the Delhi High Court to leave India if privacy related issues are not solved. Currently, the major concern set by Indian government is about data traceability as whatsapp has been charged with spreading hate speech or fake news. The government said that Indian law empowers to create safe cyberspace and tackle illegal content, as per Section 87 of the IT Act. It started in 2017 when Supreme court analysed privacy violations by WhatsApp.
In this article, we will discuss about the ongoing issue and other legal battles of WhatsApp across the globe.
The Delhi High Court was hearing petitions by WhatsApp challenging the 2021 Information Technology (IT) rules for social media intermediaries.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has opposed the petition by Facebook and WhatsApp saying “WhatsApp had violated the fundamental right by denying users any mechanism for dispute resolution.”
WhatsApp previously mentioned: “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.”
Under this specific rule, any social media platform should disclose the identity of the ‘first originator of information’ when needed.
Advocate Tejas Karia, representing WhatsApp, emphasized that the platform’s users value the “privacy and security provided by its end-to-end encryption” feature. During the court proceedings, the advocate firmly mentioned that WhatsApp might have to leave Indian market if they have to break encryption policy.
“We will have to keep a complete chain, and we don’t know which messages will be asked to be decrypted. It means millions and millions of messages will have to be stored for a number of years,” he said.
"There is no such rule anywhere else in the world. Not even in Brazil," the lawyer replied.
“As a platform, we are saying, if we are told to break encryption, then WhatsApp goes,” he continued.
The court further said that privacy rights were not absolute and “somewhere balance has to be done”.
The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 were announced by the Centre on February 25, 2021. It requires social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram to comply with the latest norms.
On March 22, the honourable Supreme Court transferred to the Delhi High Court a batch of pending pleas challenging the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
Meanwhile, numerous other petitions are still pending on this issue in Karnataka, Madras, Calcutta, Kerala and Bombay.
WhatsApp undergoing legal battle is not a new thing. In multiple European countries and Australia, there have been numerous instances. The most prominent one is Ireland Government forcing WhatsApp to pay penalty.
Legal Battle in Ireland: In August 2021, Facebook-owned WhatsApp was fined with more than $250 million in Ireland for a series of GDPR cross-border data protection infringements. It was a result of 3-year long investigation under the supervision of European data protection regulators.
Users complained against transparency breaches by WhatsApp.
With around 500 million users, India is the biggest market for WhatsApp.
