Whatsapp moves HC on new IT rules

Requiring messaging apps to “trace” chats... fundamentally undermines people’s right to privacy.

Whatsapp’s refusal to comply with the guidelines is a clear act of defiance of a measure whose intent can certainly not be doubted

Richa Banka and Deeksha Bhardwaj

NEW DELHI: Citing “dangerous invasion of privacy” and threats to free speech of its 400 million users in India, Whatsapp has moved the Delhi high court for getting quashed a rule framed by the Union government that obligates social media intermediaries to identify the first originator of a message upon an order by a competent court or executive authority.

The petition filed in the high court claims that enforcement of rule 4(2) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 will break Whatsapp’s end-to-end encryption and the privacy principles underlying it, besides impermissibly infringing upon users’ fundamental rights to privacy and freedom of speech.

Whatsapp has requested the high court to ensure no criminal liability is imposed on it for not complying with the provision, which, it contends is, “unconstitutional, illegal” and beyond the purview of the Information Technology Act.

Rule 4(2), which comes into effect from Wednesday, makes it mandatory for social media intermediary providing messaging services to trace the originator of information on their platform if required by a court or a competent authority under Section 69A of the IT Act. While the Intermediaries Rules clarify that traceability order may only be passed for serious criminal offences, some categories such as ‘public order’ are relatively broad in operation.

Although the impugned rule clarifies that companies will not be required to disclose contents of any message, the Information Technology Decryption Rules contain powers for the government to demand message content be disclosed and these together would lead to end-toend-encryption being broken to gather information about originator as well as content of a message, the company said.