WhatsApp sues Indian government over privacy rules

let's take you to India now a story being very closely followed there about WhatsApp because it is suing the government over new laws that will compel the company to violate its privacy protection the legislation comes into effect today so let's take cue to revenge who is following the story for us from delhi why isn't uh WhatsApp taking the government to court well actually the government of India in February this year they came out with the new social media Guidelines which stipulate that messaging platforms would need to make provisions for the identification of the first originator of information in this case you know chat messages so WhatsApp basically is is pleading before the court that you know doing that would mean that uh the the end-to-end encryption would completely break and this would undermine the people's right to privacy so that's why WhatsApp is is essential uh seeking uh the striking down of these new roles which uh new rules rather which the government of India uh has uh implemented why does the government want these new rules well uh you know it's being said that uh the government's plea is that it just wants to streamline the entire uh social media sector it wants to encourage regulation it wants to ensure that person have a grievance redressal mechanism uh many of these rules have been pitted as you know that they will actually, end up benefiting consumers the government wants that all these uh social media giants all these uh, service providers, they should set up grievance reversal mechanisms they should appoint officers uh if a user has any problem uh while uh while dealing with a social media platform for instance if your account has been suspended so the government's reasoning is that people don't have any way to directly reach out to these companies and there is no transparency that was the reasoning given but there are other provisions as well you know the new rules also stipulate that the government can ask many of these platforms to take down what it thinks of as objectionable content within a stipulated time frame and even the investigating agencies can seek access to a lot of information uh using uh these new rules and that is being contested by many companies and that's uh that's leading to quite a heated discussion in India so you think we'll also see a showdown between some of the other big names like Facebook and Twitter as well with the government over issues like this around privacy and free speech well actually yes the showdown looks imminent facebook actually has said that it would like to cooperate with the government in whatever best way they can uh you know the kind of statement which they've issued indicates that they are willing to follow some of these guidelines but yes there are areas of contention where even Facebook may not be able to adhere what the government wants it to adhere to but yes twitter is uh one platform which has run into a lot of trouble with the Indian government uh just a couple of days back we had a police team reach two of their offices in Delhi and uh they were there to serve notices to Twitter officials over a tweet by an Indian politician of the ruling dispensation because twitter had labeled the tweet as manipulated media so yes this is not the end of the story uh this is going to get uh heated up from here for sure revenge good to get your thoughts thanks for joining us and just to let you know WhatsApp has nearly 400 million users in India alone.