WhatsApp: Merely going to court not a ground not to comply with law of the landNew Delhi, May 26: Reacting to whatsapp, the government of India, says it respects the fundamental right to privacy and has no intention to violate it by asking messaging platform WhatsApp to disclose the first originator of a particular message.
The government's statement is in response to WhatsApp filing a case against India's new guidelines for digital media intermediaries, which came into effect earlier today.
WhatsApp: Merely going to court not a ground not to comply with law of the land
The guidelines require significant social media intermediaries i.e. social media platforms with over 5 million users to enable identification of the first originator of any piece of information which the government feels could jeopardise the sovereignty and integrity of India or includes sexually explicit material.
Platforms such as WhatsApp have however claimed that fulfilling such requests of the government would mean breaking the end-to-end (E2E) encryption on its platform and jeopardise user privacy.