The standoff between WhatsApp and the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) intensified on Wednesday with the latter slamming the Facebook-owned company for filing a petition in the Delhi High Court challenging the new IT rule that requires all social media companies to trace the originator of any message on their platforms.

“WhatsApp’s challenge, at the very last moment, and despite having sufficient time and opportunity available during consultation process and after the rules were enacted, to the Intermediary Guidelines is an unfortunate attempt to prevent the same from coming into effect,” MeitY said in a statement, adding that WhatsApp’s refusal to comply with the new rules is a clear act of defiance. The Ministry, however, did not spell out if it will take any action against the company.

WhatsApp, on the other hand, said the new rule would severely undermine user privacy. “Requiring messaging apps to ‘trace’ chats is the equivalent of asking us to keep a fingerprint of every single message sent on WhatsApp, which would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermines people’s right to privacy,” said a WhatsApp spokesperson.

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The spat

At the centre of the latest dispute is the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 under which the government has asked social media companies to put in place a system to trace the originator of a post or a message. “It is in public interest that who started the mischief leading to such a crime must be detected and punished. We cannot deny as to how in cases of mob lynching and riots, etc., repeated WhatsApp messages are circulated and recirculated whose content are already in public domain. Hence, the role of who originated is very important,” MeitY said justifying the new rule.

New terms of service

The latest spat follows differences over WhatsApp’s new terms of services. In that case the government had asked the company to roll back the new terms, saying they violated user privacy. WhatsApp has refused to do so. “At one end, WhatsApp seeks to mandate a privacy policy wherein it will share the data of all its users with its parent company, Facebook, for marketing and advertising purposes. On the other hand, WhatsApp makes every effort to refuse the enactment of the Intermediary Guidelines which are necessary to uphold law and order and curb the menace of fake news,” MeitY said.

WhatsApp also said that tracing the originator of messages is against human rights. “Traceability forces private companies to turn over the names of people who shared something even if they did not create it, shared it out of concern, or sent it to check its accuracy,” it said.

WhatsApp ‘to find solution’

Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Communications and IT, however, said that the entire debate on whether encryption would be maintained or not is misplaced. “Whether Right to Privacy is ensured through using encryption technology or some other technology is entirely the purview of the social media intermediary… it is WhatsApp’s responsibility to find a technical solution, whether through encryption or otherwise, that both happen,” he said.

Experts said that the dispute could have wider ramifications for the internet ecosystem. Krishnesh Bapat, Fellow at the Internet Freedom Foundation, said, “It’s an important lawsuit. Rule 4(2) which they have primarily challenged, has a traceability requirement. It basically mandates WhatsApp to ensure that they provide the originator of an information if the government asks for it. So this definitely has implications on both, the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression.”

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