WhatsApp to Delhi HC: It will exit India if forced to break encryption

WhatsApp is known for its end-to-end protection feature that provides privacy to users. But now, the Meta-owned messaging platform has threatened to end its services and leave India. WhatsApp’s statement came in response to a hearing filed by the company and Meta (its parent company) challenging the Rule 4(2) of the Information Technology Act, 2021.

While presenting the company’s case before a bench of the Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, advocate Tejas Karia said that people use WhatsApp because messages on its platform are end-to-end encrypted. He also said that WhatsApp will exit the country if it is told to break encryption.

“As a platform, we are saying, if we are told to break encryption, then WhatsApp goes,” Karia told the bench as reported by Bar and Bench.

So, what is Rule 4(2) of the IT Act, 2021?

For the unversed, the Rule 4(2) requires the social media company to ‘enable the identification of the first originator of the information on its computer resource’ when there in an order by the court or an order by a competent authority.

In simple worth, it requires social media companies to share the originator of a message. This clause will enable the court and the law enforcement authorities to nab the individual responsible for sharing a message with fake news.

But why is WhatsApp and Meta against it?

Advocate Karia told the Delhi HC bench that if WhatsApp was to offer this provision, it would require the company to store millions of messages that are exchanged on its platform every day for a long period running into years. It also would require the company to develop a sort of a backdoor that will enable WhatsApp to read users’ messages in order to comply with a court order. This backdoor can also be misused by hackers and to gain access to users’ personal and financial information.

“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 told the bench adding that such requirements don’t exist anywhere else in the world.

The case has been adjourned and the next hearing will now take place on August 14.