Technology is suing the Indian government for preventing the encryption of WhatsApp messages

Share The Indian government, which has the highest number of users (400 million) in the world, has sought the courts to stop the new law on information technology. When the deadline for the instant messaging service to respond to a request made by New Delhi regarding the latest update of the application expires, the company’s extraordinary decision to take legal action where it operates occurs. New Deal, Its practice came into force in India and other countries like Brazil, Regulates data transfer between parent company WhatsApp and Facebook.

Approved in March, Indian regulations guarantee technology companies the ability to detect news and posts: they can identify the origin of a message when needed by authorities. One more step in the Asian nation’s crusade against big technology Whose power is trying to limit Executives led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for three years.

Messages sent through WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted: they are indescribable from the moment they leave the sender’s device until they reach the receiver. You cannot access them or the company. According to the protocol set by New Delhi, the instant messaging service controlled by Facebook will be forced to reduce the security standards of its communications. “We are committed to protecting the privacy of people’s personal messages and will do everything we can to achieve this within the law of India,” a US company spokesman told the newspaper.

Similarly, WhatsApp and the rest of the instant messaging services should create large databases with all the messages sent from India and assign a kind of identifier to each communication to retrieve it if requested. Company sources suspect that this could be done due to the possibility of opening the door to hackers, or at the discretion of the authorities when accessing the information, without seriously compromising data security.

Although WhatsApp’s official position is that it will work with the Indian government to find “practical solutions”, the brief tone of the demand Got access to Reuters, Strong. New Delhi has accused the new rule of being “unconstitutional” and an “invasion of dangerous privacy”, accusing it of violating its authority.

Some observers have rejected India’s Internet rules as a form of unrestricted control over freedom of expression. “It restricts the choice of companies to modify their own sites and creates new possibilities for government monitoring of citizens. These regulations threaten the idea of ​​a free and open Internet based on human rights standards,” he wrote. Panel of Experts of the Electronic Frontiers FoundationAn influential American non-profit organization that monitors privacy and digital rights.

Last month, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were forced to remove dozens of posts criticizing the Modi government and its handling of the epidemic. Representatives of the authorities said the messages should be withdrawn because they could cause panic among the citizens and disrupt the work of the government. Was taken The New York Times. Another example of these tensions is the police visit to Twitter’s offices in New Delhi this week, which Reuters reports are being investigated for branding content that officially handles statements by a member of the ruling party.

The Rebellion of India

India, along with Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and more recently Argentina, is one of the countries that has revolted against the new WhatsApp update. what is this Effective May 15, Transfers data from the instant messaging officer to its parent company, Facebook. An exchange that cannot be implemented in the European Union, the Public Data Protection Regulation prohibits the transfer of this personal data, but the company began to apply it to other parts of the world.

In March, the Competition Commission of India WhatsApp and Facebook decided to share the data as “abuse of dominance”. As a result, he stopped the change in circumstances and began an investigation.

Indian Justice and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad sent a letter to WhatsApp headquarters on May 18 urging the company to withdraw the update, which came into effect on May 15. Legal action can be taken against a US company if it does not comply with the provisions of the Information Technology Act.

New Delhi called WhatsApp on May 25 to respond to the request. The company on Monday promised a day before the scheduled deadline that it would not limit the app’s functionality to Indian users who do not agree to renew it. In those cases, I choose to remind myself from time to time that there is an update pending, so I try to get good feedback from the public.

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