Whatsapp is About To Officially Leave India if Forced to Unveil The Encryption

WhatsApp has warned it will shut down services in India if forced to break encryption, escalating its legal battle with the government over new IT rules mandating traceability of encrypted messages.

New Delhi - WhatsApp has issued an alarming statement saying that it would be forced to cease its operations in India if the authorities would require it to breach the end-to-end encryption of chats that is a mandatory feature of its services. Recently Facebook Messenger, a platform owned by Facebook, issued this firm warning to the Delhi High Court on this week in a case that is currently being heard over the new IT regulations.

The company which has appointed Tejas Karia to represent it in this battle of giants is none other than WhatsApp. Through WhatsApp, Karia announced that the platform couldn’t be broken and that they’d rather stop the Indian market activity than play by the rules set by the authorities. He pointed out that what makes WhatsApp stand out from the rest is that, with its privacy features like end-to-end encrypted chats, calls and videos, millions of people feel secure using the app.

Just like Facebook, the Meta-owned platform has about 400 million users in India which is a very large market. So, completely moving out of this market can be a very difficult decision for the company. Nonetheless, it seems that WhatsApp is determined to stay firm on its encryption principles as it has been the company′s core competitive advantage and the reason for its meteoric rise to become the most popular messaging app in the world.

The Indian government has stressed that WhatsApp and other messaging platforms should be made to comply with Information Technology Rules 2021, which requires them to allow the tracing of messages to assist in law enforcement investigations. However, WhatsApp stands on the belief that this is not feasible because even the company cannot read the message in end-to-end encryption without access to the decryption key.

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The essence of the standoff can be traced to the collision between the government’s supposedly need for maintaining security and investigating crimes on one side, and on WhatsApp’s part, the grounds for which they hold that encrypted personal communication is a fundamental privacy right that must be protected at all costs.

The litigations however, continue simultaneously. The WhatsApp cautionary news has made the users suddenly think that they may eventually be deprived of using the popular messaging service. The issue is important, and the ruling will be crucial for both sides as it may impact the entire system of digital privacy and encryption policies in India.