WhatsApp Goes To Court Against New Digital Rules, Cites Users' Privacy

WhatsApp says messages on its platform are end-to-end encrypted, so to comply with the law it would have break encryption for those who send and receive messages.

WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in the Delhi High Court against the government's new digital rules that take effect today, saying these would compel it to break privacy protections. The Facebook-owned messaging service filed its case on Tuesday against the rules that will require it to "trace" the origin of particular messages sent on the service. "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," WhatsApp, which has nearly 400 million users in India, said in a statement. "We have consistently joined civil society and experts around the world in opposing requirements that would violate the privacy of our users. In the meantime, we will also continue to engage with the government of India on practical solutions aimed at keeping people safe, including responding to valid legal requests for the information available to us," said a spokesperson of the California-based Facebook unit.