WhatsApp is suing Indian government over law that requires trackable messages

WhatsApp has sued the Indian government over a law that requires WhatsApp to make messages traceable. The company calls the law ineffective and says it is prone to abuse.

With the lawsuit, WhatsApp wants to prevent the Indian government from bringing the new law into effect, writes The New York Times. Under the law, which was proposed in February and is due to come into effect on Wednesday, chat services such as WhatsApp would have to create ‘traceable’ databases of all messages sent. In addition, the company should attach identifiable ‘fingerprints’ to messages that users send among themselves.

WhatsApp says it has no insight into user data and that the tracking rules cannot be implemented in practice. The ‘threat’ that sent messages can be traced back to a person takes away someone’s privacy, WhatsApp writes. The law would also have an impact on the security of the chat service and in practice ‘break’ end-to-end encryption.

According to Reuters, the Indian government wants the law to ensure that the first source of information can be identified. Under the law, the government could request from chat services who the first, original source of a message is. The government is mainly concerned with fake news and the government contradicts WhatsApp’s claim that the new law violates end-to-end encryption.

India has been taking a tougher stance on social media companies lately. The government wants these companies to take offline ‘fake news’ about the corona pandemic and the Indian government’s approach to stop the pandemic. Earlier this week, Indian police went to Twitter’s office in India after Twitter labeled messages from a spokesperson for India’s largest party, among others, as “manipulated media.”