As the new IT regulations will go into effect today, May 25th, 2021, various social media platforms in India have announced compliance with the new rules, or they are still in the process of becoming compliant. While some of these rules are reasonable to implement, some are not, and in response WhatsApp has now filed a lawsuit against the Government of India, seeking to block the regulations.
According to the new regulations, social media companies that have more than 5 million users would be required to have a grievance redressal mechanism that is led by a resident grievance officer, along with a chief compliance officer and a nodal contact person. Along with this, companies would be required to have an automated process to take down pornography and any content flagged by authorities as unlawful must be taken down within 36 hours.
Most companies, including Google and Facebook, have already started rolling out features to ensure they are compliant with these new regulations. Twitter, who recently came under fire for marking a post by a leader of the BJP as “Manipulated Media”, has not commented on their compliance.
However, one of the particular regulations announced is that companies would be required to have a system where they can “identify the first originator of information” and make messages “traceable”. According to the Government, this system would only be used in scenarios when the security of the state, or public order is threatened.
It is this rule for which WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit against the Government of India in the Delhi Court today. According to WhatsApp, implementing such a system would fundamentally not work as it would mean breaking end-to-end encryption and thereby violate their users’ privacy. WhatsApp has long maintained that they do not keep track of personal messages sent between their users and does not plan to backtrack on that either.
With its lawsuit, the company is seeking to block the regulations as they will violate fundamental privacy protections of Indian citizens.