WhatsApp has told the Delhi High Court that it will exit from India if it is forced to break the encryption of the messaging, which allows only the sender and receiver to read the messages.
WhatsApp Threatened to Quit India
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Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Whatsapp, is challenging the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, which require companies to trace chats and identify messages’ origins.
The company also said that it has over 400 million users in India. People are using its messaging platform because it offers end-to-end encryption, which does not allow anyone except the sender and the recipient to read the messages. However, if forced to break this encryption, it will exit from India.
Further, the company said this would violate the users’ privacy and the fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Constitution of India. The lawyer from Meta also argued that no such rule exists in any other region of the world, not even Brazil. Furthermore, they don’t know which message can be asked to decrypt, so they have to store tens of millions of messages for years.
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