The said rules that requires lining the origin of conversations were the equivalent of keeping a "fingerprint of every single message sent on the service".
The government had introduced new guidelines to regulate content on social media and streaming platforms. This was implemented in February. The Guidelines being that all messaging platforms would need to make provisions to the rule — "identification of the first originator of the information".
Now India is WhatsApp's largest market with about 400 million users. Social media platforms with more than five million users would be required to appoint a compliance officer, a nodal contact officer and a resident grievance officer.
In the light of this, WhatsApp filed a bespeak in the high court in Delhi asking it to declare the new rule unconstitutional.
WhatsApp representative in a statement said that the rules "would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermine people's right to privacy".
"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," The whatsApp articulated.
Traceability of texts would force private companies to collect and store billions of messages sent each day for the sole purpose of turning it over to law enforcement agencies. This was according to the messaging service.
The messaging service also emphasized on tracing the origin of a message not to be implemented in a foolproof way and would be highly susceptible to abuse.
According to WhatsApp, the process of traceability can lead to ways for people to be "framed for things they did not say or do".
Meanwhile, on 25 February, the government rolled out taking in regulations for social media as well as video streaming platforms, necessitating them to remove any content flagged by authorities within 36 hours.
In addition, they would have to track the originator of a particular message if asked by a court or the government.
The following platforms viz: Twitter,Whatsapp, and Facebook were given three months to comply with these rules.
However, a report of the Indian Express newspaper has it that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter had not appointed officers as government regulations dictated.
