Annoyed with the rising spread of fake news and objectionable content on WhatsApp, the Government of India has asked the platform to allow it more access to the conversations occurring over the social messaging app.
The demand by the centre has irked WhatsApp as it clashes with its end-to-end encryption policy and has refused to abide by the new norms. The clash as per industry experts could escalate to a level wherein WhatsApp may face a shut down in the country.
As per a quote published in Bloomberg, Gopalakrishnan S., a senior officer in Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has said, “For six months, we’ve been telling them to bring more accountability to their platform but what have they done? Paedophiles can go about on WhatsApp fully secure that they won’t get caught. It is absolutely evil.”
WhatsApp on other hand is claiming that the demand by the government violates its privacy policies and complying with the demand would cease the privacy protection of its users.
“What is contemplated by the rules is not possible today given the end-to-end encryption that we provide and it would require us to re-architect WhatsApp, leading us to a different product, one that would not be fundamentally private,” said Carl Woog, the spokesperson for WhatsApp.
“We ban users from WhatsApp if we become aware they are sharing content that exploits or endangers children,’’ added Woog.
WhatsApp has adopted a zero tolerance policy for child sexual abuse and bans about 2,50,000 accounts every month in this regard. Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent company has also recently stated that it would bring end-to-end encryption for its Messenger and Instagram users.
The encryption brings in complete privacy for users and even Facebook couldn’t access the messages being shared on the platform. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has recently proposed a draft of new regulations which makes social media platforms liable for any objectionable content being shared.
The amendment demands the operators to trace the users sharing unlawful content within a window of 3 days.
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