WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit against the Indian government, claiming that new regulations might allow authorities to track people’s private chats and conduct mass monitoring.

The new IT guidelines of WhatsApp, which were announced in February 2021, came into effect on May 26. However, WhatsApp has objected to a traceability section in the new IT Rules, which requires social media companies to locate the first originator of the material if the government requests it.

WhatsApp remarked, “Requiring messaging apps to ‘trace’ chats is the equivalent of asking us to keep a fingerprint of every single message sent on WhatsApp, which would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermines people’s right to privacy.”

Here are the key aspects that will help you discover everything about the new debate.

• WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit alleging that the new social media rules are unlawful. In support of its arguments, it cites the “2017 Justice K S Puttaswamy vs. Union Of India” decision. It wants the court to make sure the clause doesn’t go into effect and that its employees aren’t held criminally liable if they don’t comply.

• According to WhatsApp, tracking will not be possible since breaching end-to-end encryption would compromise user privacy and impede free speech and expression. 

• WhatsApp would have to re-engineer the app specifically for India, which seems unlikely. If WhatsApp is required to follow the laws, it would have to develop a program that supports traceability but does not use end-to-end encryption.

• Facebook-owned WhatsApp clarifies that it will have to preserve a log of all messages to track out the source of any message. Because of the end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp is now unable to read a user’s message.

• Experts on WhatsApp and the internet have stated that tracking is not infallible. Furthermore, tracing the originator becomes harder when users forward or copy communications.

According to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India, WhatsApp’s failure to follow the new IT guidelines has been marked a blatant act of disobedience. It also stated that the right to privacy will be subject to reasonable limitations and that social media companies will only be required to reveal the source of a message in certain circumstances and respond to the court order.