New Delhi: WhatsApp told the Delhi High Court that the messaging platform will shut down in India if it is forced to break message encryption which protects user privacy by ensuring that only the sender and recipient can read and access message content.
“As a platform, we are saying, if we are told to break encryption, then WhatsApp goes”, counsel Tejas Karia, appearing for Whastapp, told a Division Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh.
Opposing the amendments to the IT rules, Whatsapp claimed the rules were introduced without consultation. It said they were against privacy of users. Tejas Karia, appearing for the messaging app, told the court that people use the mobile application for its privacy features.
The firm argued that the rules violate the fundamental rights of the users under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution. The lawyer claimed no such rules exist anywhere else in the world. He said WhatsApp would have to keep a “complete chain” as it would not know which message would need to be decrypted.
Facebook and WhatsApp have moved the court challenging the new rules, saying they are in violation of the right to privacy.
The central government’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) has opposed the two companies’ petition, saying WhatsApp had violated the fundamental right by denying users any mechanism for dispute resolution.
The ministry has told the Delhi high court that if the rules were not implemented, the law enforcement agencies would have difficulty in tracing the origin of fake messages.
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