Could WhatsApp stop working in India?
If the Indian authorities force Meta, WhatsApp's parent company, to eliminate end-to-end encryption, the platform would have to abandon its main market
Meta is in an extreme situation regarding the operation of WhatsApp in India, its main market, given that the authorities seem to want the elimination of end-to-end encryption.
This is a measure that would affect the privacy of the messaging platform and leave the door open to censorship, controls and cybersecurity risks.
The encryption of messages does not convince the authorities of several countries. As a background in India, it is known that the country wants to eliminate this feature due to the leak of a document “that showed the position of different member countries of the European Union (EU).” In 2021, the Government of India implemented the “Information Technology Rules”, with the aim of eliminating the limitations “that end-to-end encryption poses on access to certain content in the investigation of crimes. Therefore, if they force removing end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp will stop working in India.”
Some countries in the European Union and the United Kingdom have already tried to force the elimination of encryption of WhatsApp messages and communications with new legislation. “In an open letter, 32 European police chiefs recently urged the tech sector to boost security by design and abandon end-to-end encryption because they believe it undermines their ability to investigate serious crimes.”
In any case, if Meta were to withdraw WhatsApp from India, it would lose a significant market share, since it has 500 million users in the country, out of a total of 3 billion globally.
M.Pino
Source: 20minutos
(Reference image source: Aditya Siva in Unsplash)
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