WhatsApp recently filed a lawsuit in Delhi. The communication behemoth app is accusing the Indian government of attempting to end-users privacy. It’s based on the conclusion reached by Whatsapp experts saying that this regulation will force Facebook to violate its privacy protection policy.
The lawsuit requires the Delhi High Court to rule that one of the provisions of the new regulations violates the right to privacy in the Indian Constitution. To be more specific its because this regulation requires that social media companies must confirm who is the first initiator of information when the government needs it.
This regulation requires WhatsApp only to expose people who are accused of doing something wrong or illegal. However, WhatsApp claims that there is no way of doing this distinction because WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, and to do that they must break the encryption process for information on the “recipients” and “initiators”.
WhatsApp has nearly 400 million users in India.
The Indian government has been struggling with the technology giants like Facebook, Alphabet, and Twitter.
Last week, the Indian police visited Twitter’s office. Twitter claims that the Indian government is manipulative and not entirely truthful and that the Indian government has been forcing technology companies to delete comments related to its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Big-tech companies are heavily investing in India. However, these new regulations may jeopardize the prospects of these investments.
Some of these regulations request to appoint Indian citizens as key compliance roles, delete content within 36 hours after the legal order is issued, and establish a mechanism for responding to complaints. In addition, these technology companies are requested to use automated mechanisms to remove pornographic content. Facebook said it agrees to most of the terms in the new regulations. However, it is still seeking to negotiate some aspects. Twitter, which has received the most criticism for failing to delete posts by government critics, declined to comment.
