WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against India’s government in the Delhi High Court Wednesday over new rules requiring the company to make users’ messages traceable.
Why it matters: The Facebook-owned encrypted messaging service says the regulations that take effect Wednesday violate users’ privacy, which it argues is in breach of the country’s constitution.
What they’re saying: “Civil society and technical experts around the world have consistently argued that a requirement to ‘trace’ private messages would break end-to-end encryption and lead to real abuse,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Axios.
- “WhatsApp is committed to protecting the privacy of people’s personal messages and we will continue to do all we can within the laws of India to do so.”
The big picture: Tech giants are facing increasingly hostile foreign governments that are taxing their profits, attempting to halt their acquisitions, labeling them as monopolies and passing laws to limit their powers, per Axios’ Ashley Gold.
- In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has clashed with Big Tech over what it has called pandemic misinformation, as COVID-19 surges across the country.
- Officers from the country’s elite antiterrorism police unit visited Twitter’s New Delhi offices on Monday night over a warning label the company had issued on some tweets, the New York Time notes. Critics the real reason is the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is upset over public criticism of its pandemic response.
Of note: While it’s unusual for WhatsApp to file a lawsuit against a government, the company said it has “consistently opposed legal action that would break end-to-end encryption.”
- The company currently has a legal case before Brazil’s Supreme Court — on the constitutionality of blocking messaging apps.
This story first appeared in axios.com, https://www.axios.com/whatsapp-sues-india-government-new-rules-19d049c4-646b-49fb-804c-341de64710b3.html