![]() Globally, the traceability debate has become a fraught one, which seeks to balance rights to privacy and free speech of the multitude on one hand and the need to give law enforcement access to information about criminal suspects on the other. In Indian public debates, it has usually come to mean, tracing the first sender of a message that has been forwarded multiple times. Traceability means tracing the person who sent the message. Reuters first reported the development but only mentioned the petition filed by WhatsApp. Forbes India has reviewed both the petitions. This is the first time that WhatsApp and Facebook are doing the litigating themselves. Until these two petitions, the social media firms had been parties in multiple cases around the world, including in India, that had been filed to debate whether law enforcement agencies should have access to originator information if it means breaking end-to-end encryption. Patel, who is also hearing three separate cases against WhatsApp’s 2021 Privacy Policy update. The petitions have thus far not been listed for hearing in the Delhi High Court but it is expected that they will be heard by the division bench led by Chief Justice D.N. “It is in public interest that who started the mischief leading to such crime must be detected and punished,” the statement read. In response to the lawsuits, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued a statement that the traceability requirement passes the muster of proportionality. This echoes Forbes India’s previous reporting wherein experts had warned that retaining digital fingerprints of messages (read: hashes) would lead to the creation of giant catalogues through which WhatsApp will be able to track all the messages that people send on its platform. In a no-holds barred blog post, WhatsApp called traceability “ineffective and highly susceptible to abuse”, which would effectively mandate “a new form of mass surveillance” explaining that to trace even one message, WhatsApp would have to trace every message and will thus land up with “giant databases” with “permanent identity stamp” of every message that is sent on its platform. At the heart of the matter is WhatsApp’s entire default service and Facebook’s specific “Secret Conversations” feature on Messenger that allows users to opt-in for end-to-end encrypted messaging. The two social media giants want the Delhi High Court to declare the traceability requirement as ultra vires (beyond the legal mandate of) the Information Technology Act, 2000, and that no criminal liability should be imposed if the companies do not implement traceability. They have also called the traceability requirement unconstitutional and violative of people’s right to privacy, as guaranteed under the Supreme Court’s Puttaswamy judgement. ![]() ![]() In two separate petitions filed with the Delhi High Court on the night of May 25, the two companies argued that the traceability requirement-mandated under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, notified in February 2021-will force them to break end-to-end encryption. WhatsApp and its parent company Facebook are finally going on the offensive to protect end-to-end encryption. The heart of the matter are WhatsApp’s entire default service and Facebook’s specific “Secret Conversations” feature on Messenger that allows users to opt-in for end-to-end encrypted messaging Image: Shutterstock ![]()
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