Since devices and applications that offer full encryption became popular with consumers, governments around the world have tried to pass laws that would force companies to break encryption or build back doors into their products. That way, law enforcement agencies could collect data, including content from encrypted phones and chat apps that could be relevant to investigations. Those initiatives were unsuccessful, and devices and applications that offer end-to-end encryption continue to provide strong protection for users.
The Indian government has proposed a different tracking method that does not involve breaking encrypted texts from one end to the other. Officials want Facebook to tag each WhatsApp message separately so that it can be traced back to the original sender in the event a crime is committed.
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Senior officials informed the Economic Times that the government wants WhatsApp to assign an alphanumeric hash to every message sent through the platform. The hash would travel with the message, giving it a unique identifier without breaking the strong encryption.
“The government is willing to work with WhatsApp to find a solution that allows the traceability of message originators without breaking encryption,” anonymous officials have said.
The government wants to be able to trace the first sender of a message that could be flagged by a court of law or an authorized government agency. It is unclear what kind of messages would be flagged and how they would occur if WhatsApp chats were encrypted. Also, it’s unclear how finding the original sender could help authorities, although there are scenarios where that could be helpful. This quote indicates the type of crime that officials could target with the measure:
‘You cannot run such a large platform and not create responsibility on it. Even if a woman’s dignity is compromised, they must help catch the perpetrators, ‘added the sources.
Facebook has resisted the lawsuit, citing its own privacy rules. The company also said that it does not have the technology to track every message sent on WhatsApp. India is Facebook’s largest WhatsApp market, with 400 million active users. Billions of messages are sent every minute, and each one should have a unique tracker.
The government official who spoke to ET said that conversations with WhatsApp are ongoing and that the company has not formally communicated its position. WhatsApp has three months to comply with the February notification.
Indian government officials insist Facebook could track messages without breaking encryption, while noting that the government is not even seeking to enforce a rule in the country’s IT Act that contains a clause that requires companies to decrypt the messages. messages when ordered by the government. Facebook couldn’t break WhatsApp’s encryption even if ordered to do so.
The report notes that WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart said earlier this month in a podcast that the company hopes to find a solution that addresses India’s traceability concerns without breaking end-to-end encryption.
Facebook has made a commitment over the years to never remove strong encryption from WhatsApp. The company also said that its unified messaging system would one day merge Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, and everything would be protected by encryption.
More recently, Facebook had to face a massive WhatsApp controversy, when millions of people rushed to download Signal and Telegram in response to planned changes to Facebook’s privacy policy. Facebook has been in cleanup mode for a few months now, telling WhatsApp users every change it receives that the privacy policy change would not remove end-to-end encryption of calls and texts.
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Chris Smith began writing about gadgets as a hobby, and before he knew it, he shared his views on technology with readers around the world. Whenever he doesn’t write about devices, he miserably fails to stay away from them, though he desperately tries. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.
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