India ; As per the government, the current IT rules are not set in isolation but have global preferences. “In July 2019, the governments of the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada announced a communique, concluding that: “tech companies should hold mechanisms in the form of their encrypted products and services whereby governments, acting with proper legal authority, can obtain access to data in a clear and usable format. Brazilian law enforcement is looking for WhatsApp to give suspects’ IP addresses, customer information, geo-location data, and physical messages.”
“What India is asking for is significantly much less than what some of the other countries have demanded,” it added. As per the government, the demand for determining the source of WhatsApp messages is for prevention, investigation, or punishment of very severe crimes related to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the protection of the state, close relationships with foreign states, or public law, or of provocation to a crime linking to the above or in connection with rape, sexually explicit material or child sexual abuse matter. Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that “the Government of India is committed to ensuring the Right of Privacy to all its citizens but at the same time it is also the responsibility of the government to maintain law and order and ensure national security.” He also said, “none of the measures proposed by India will impact the normal functioning of WhatsApp in any manner whatsoever and for the common users, there will be no impact.”
WhatsApp is protecting its opposition to set the fresh laws by insisting that messages on its platforms are end-to-end encrypted and the latest IT rules will breach WhatsApp’s encryption. Still, the government said that it’s WhatsApp’s liability to arrive up with a technical solution over this debate.“The whole debate on whether encryption would be kept or not is misplaced. Whether the Right to Privacy is assured through using encryption technology or some other technology is completely the purview of the social media mediator. The Government of India is confined to ensuring the Right of Privacy to all its citizens as well as having the means and the information required to assure public order and maintain national security. WhatsApp has to find a technical solution, whether through encryption or otherwise, that both happen,” said Union Minister Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad.
The government said, “After October 2018, no specific objection has been made by WhatsApp to the government of India in writing relating to the requirement to trace the first originator concerning serious offenses. They have generally sought time to extend the time for enforcement of guidelines but did not make any formal reference that traceability is not possible.” It added, “WhatsApp’s challenge (lawsuit), at the very last moment, and despite having sufficient time and opportunity available during the consultation process and after the rules were enacted, to the Intermediary Guidelines is an unfortunate attempt to prevent the same from coming into effect.”The government emphasized, “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 executes every attempt to reject the enactment of the Intermediary Guidelines which are required to support law and order and restrict the threat of fake news.”
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As per the Intermediary rules, the originator of data can only be determined in a situation where other solutions have proven to be inefficient, making the same an ultimate resort proposal. Moreover, such data can only be asked as per a method approved by the law thereby incorporating adequate legal safeguards.”When Rule 4(2) of the Intermediary Guidelines is examined through the test of proportionality then that test is also met. The cornerstone of this test is whether a lesser effective alternative remedy exists.” explained the government.
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