Will shutdown services if forced to break encryption: WhatsApp to Delhi HC

WhatsApp has issued a stark warning to the Delhi High Court, stating that it would effectively cease operations in India if it is compelled to compromise message encryption. The messaging giant, owned by Meta, stated that end-to-end encryption is pivotal in safeguarding user privacy, ensuring that only the sender and recipient have access to message content.

“As a platform, we are saying, if we are told to break encryption, then WhatsApp goes,” Tejas Karia, appearing for Whatsapp, told a Division Bench.

Karia further stated that  that people use WhatsApp because of the privacy features that it offers. WhatsApp has more than 400 million users in India, making it the largest market for the platform.

WhatsApp and its parent company Meta are challenging the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, which necessitate the tracing of chats and identification of message originators. They contend that these regulations compromise encryption standards and contravene user privacy rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution.

The messaging platform argue that these rules undermine the integrity of content encryption and infringe upon users' fundamental rights protected under Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Indian Constitution.

"There is no such rule anywhere else in the world. We will have to keep a complete chain and we don’t know which messages will be asked to be decrypted. It means millions and millions of messages will have to be stored for a number of years,” Karia said.