Our Privacy In Your Hands, Milords

Courts must step in as neither government’s nor WhatsApp’s approach is best for users

- Apar Gupta

In courts of law there is the doctrine of necessary and proper parties, without whose presence a case cannot be properly decided. This comes to mind in WhatsApp’s court challenge to the central government’s IT Rules as this case is inevitably about you, the average internet user.

The IT Rules, which were notified on February 25, 2021, bring in additional compliance for social media companies with more than 5 million users. It includes an obligation to implement a technical system called “traceability”. This ties the identity of the originator of the message to the message and became effective on May 26, 2021.

This has spurred WhatsApp to go before the high court of Delhi, causing a media maelstrom. This case has obvious implications for the privacy and cybersecurity of about 400 million users. To understand the implications let us start from the first principles of technical and legal impacts of traceability.

Given the likelihood you are a WhatsApp user, you may have seen a conspicuous notice when you open it – your messages are protected by end-to-end encryption. This is a technology that utilises a technical design called the signal protocol and ensures that your messages cannot be read by WhatsApp during the course of transmission. This helps prevent not only your messages from being accessed by third parties but also guards against a whole range of cybersecurity risks. Encryption helps keep your conversations private and safe.

It is the contention of the government that enables a whole range of illegality. For instance, misinformation that leads to mob lynching or reprehensible actions such as sharing of non-consensual sexual imagery of women and minors. Officials argue that the solution to this is finding out the identity of persons who first compose such messages and are its originators.