WhatsApp sues Indian govt, says new IT rules mean end to privacy
In a significant development, the social networking platform Whatsapp has filed a legal complaint against the Indian government for seeking to block new IT regulations which is set to come into force on Wednesday (May 26), saying that the new policy will end privacy protections of the California-based Facebook (FB.O) unit, Reuters reported.
According to report, WhatsApp in its legal complaint requested the Delhi High Court to declare that one of the new rules is a violation of privacy rights as per the Constitution of India since the new rule requires social media companies to identify the "first originator of information" when asked by government authorities.
WhatsApp -- which has 53 crore users in India as per the government data -- had faced severe backlash over user concerns that data was being shared with parent company, Facebook.
While the law requires WhatsApp to provide information only about the people credibly accused of wrongdoing, the company said it is impossible to do this alone. According to Whatsapp, messages are end-to-end encrypted and in order to comply with the law the Facebook-owned firm said it would have break encryption for receivers, as well as "originators", of messages.
Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram have not yet accepted the Union government’s new Intermediary Guidelines. This has led to many believing that the social media giants could get banned in India. . The deadline to accept the guidelines set by the government ended on May 25.
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However, none of the social media giants have complied with the new IT rules yet that were issued by the government three months ago.
In February, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had given a three-month time to the social platforms to comply with the new IT rules.
Meanwhile, Facebook on Tuesday said is working to implement operational processes and aims to comply with the provisions of the IT rules.
The social media giant -- which also owns photo-sharing platform Instagram -- said it continues to discuss a "few of the issues which need more engagement" with the government.
Facebook remains committed to people's ability to freely and safely express themselves on our platform, the spokesperson added.
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