'No fundamental right is absolute': Govt reminds WhatsApp over its lawsuit against new digital guidelines

The IT Ministry also asked all major social media companies to inform about the steps taken to comply with the new guidelines.

"Please confirm and share your response ASAP and preferably today itself," the Centre wrote.

Invalidating WhatsApp's arguments, Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said: "The government of India is committed to ensuring the right to privacy to all its citizens as well as having the means and the information necessary to ensure public order and maintain national security. It is WhatsApp's responsibility to find a technical solution, whether through encryption or otherwise, that both happen."

Facebook-owned instant messaging app WhatsApp filed a lawsuit in the Delhi High Court against the Central government's new digital rules effecting from Wednesday.

Filing the case on Tuesday, the Facebook-owned app said such digital rules would violate privacy protections of users.

Prasad clarified that WhatsApp will be required to trace the originator of a message only "for prevention, investigation or punishment of very serious offences related to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order, or of incitement to an offence relating to the above or in relation with rape, sexually explicit material or child sexual abuse material".

WhatsApp said in a statement as quoted by NDTV, "Requiring messaging apps to 'trace' chats is the equivalent of asking us to keep a fingerprint of every single message sent on WhatsApp, which would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermines people's right to privacy."

WhatsApp has 400 million users in India.

"We have consistently joined civil society and experts around the world in opposing requirements that would violate the privacy of our users. In the meantime, we will also continue to engage with the government of India on practical solutions aimed at keeping people safe, including responding to valid legal requests for the information available to us," said a spokesperson of the California-based Facebook arm.

Dispelling the apprehensions over privacy breach, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the originator of a message will be traced only as a last resort in a scenario where all other methods have failed, and can only be sought as per a process sanctioned by the law thereby incorporating sufficient legal safeguards.

Prasad also stated that “none of the measures proposed by India will impact the normal functioning of WhatsApp in any manner whatsoever and for the common users, there will be no impact”

"It is in public interest that who started the mischief leading to such crime must be detected and punished. We cannot deny as to how in cases of mob lynching and riots etc. repeated WhatsApp messages are circulated and recirculated whose content are already in public domain. Hence the role of who originated is very important," the Minister stressed.

He also said India was asking WhatsApp much less compared to other countries and pointed out that the messaging app hadn't objected to traceability before.
Prasad said WhatsApp's lawsuit is an attempt to block the new rules on the day they were to take effect.

If the social media companies fail to comply with the new guidelines, they would lose protection accorded to them under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act.

Section 79 provides social media intermediaries immunity from legal prosecution for content posted on their platforms.

According to media reports, this means that social media platforms will no longer remain just intermediaries and will be treated like other publishing companies liable for content published.
  
Facebook and Google have said they will comply with the new guidelines. Though Facebbok has said it wants to discuss some of the issues "which need more engagement".