MIS ASSIGNMENT NUMBER 2

CASE STUDY

NEW IT RULES IMPLETENTED BY GOVT. OF INDIA

AND ITS IMPACT ON PLATFORMS LIKE WHATSAPP

ROLL NO-20421107
JASDEEP SINGH
SECTION:-B
Brief Introduction to the Case
The government’s latest rules for social media, which came into effect on 26
May 2021, mandates instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp to trace the
origin of a message, if required by the authorities by law. The WhatsApp now
owned by social network giant Facebook, which had consistently opposed
diluting encryption of its platform, has taken the government to court, saying
that the new rules violate the right to privacy of Indian users, and called for the
newly introduced rules to be declared unconstitutional.
According to the government, it was in the public interest to detect and punish
those who started the mischief leading to such a crime. “We cannot deny that
in cases of mob lynching and riots etc. repeated WhatsApp messages are
circulated and recirculated whose content are already in public domain,” it
pointed out.
Well even before the current covid 19 pandemic, the “fake news” pandemic
has swept the world since 2014 , inciting riots , communal violence and civil
unrest . The capitol hill incident in USA and Delhi 2019 riots can be the
example .

WhatsApp has filed a legal complaint against the Indian government in New
Delhi seeking to block new IT regulations coming into force on Wednesday that
experts say would compel the California-based Facebook unit to break privacy
protections, sources said.

According to the lawsuit, WhatsApp has pleaded Delhi High Court to declare that
one of the new rules is a violation of privacy rights in India's constitution since it
requires social media companies to identify the "first originator of information"
when authorities demand it.

While the law requires WhatsApp to unmask only people credibly accused of
wrongdoing, the company says it cannot do that alone in practice. Because
messages are end-to-end encrypted, to comply with the law WhatsApp says it
would have break encryption for receivers, as well as "originators", of messages.
INDIAN GOVERNOMENT’S CONTROVERSIAL CENSORSHIP PUSH
As WhatsApp, its parent Facebook and tech rivals have all invested heavily in
India, company officials worry privately that increasingly heavy-handed
regulation by the Modi government could jeopardize their bussiness prospects.
Among the new rules are requirements that big social media firms appoint
Indian citizens to key compliance roles, remove content within 36 hours of a
legal order, and set up a mechanism to respond to complaints. They must also
use automated processes to take down pornography.
The new traceability and filtering requirements may put an end to end-to-end
encryption in India. This is quite alarming as it as according to experst in this
matter, the implementation of this controversial law violates the fundamental
right to privacy.