WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in a Delhi high court against the Indian government over new internet laws that it says violate privacy laws in the Indian constitution.
The new laws give the Indian government more power to monitor online activity and essentially would force the chat app to remove its message encryption in India and messages would then be stored on a ‘traceable’ database. These laws were passed back in February and come into effect today (Wednesday, 26th May 2021).
WhatsApp hits back
“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. 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,” a company representative told TechCrunch.
The new lawsuit sees the chat app – and Facebook – opening something of a war on two fronts. The pair are already in court in India over that government’s demands that WhatsApp roll back its Privacy Policy that was announced earlier this year and went into effect this month.