Sudhir Yadav, an activist from Gurgaon, filed a petition in Supreme Court against Whatsapp’s strong encryption.
You may be already aware that Whatsapp introduced end-to-end encryption to the messenger application. Few people across the nation raised their voice considering the security aspects. Now slowly everything went into silence, and people adapted end-to-end encryption without any further discussions about the security.
According to the Indian encryption policy, Indian laws permit only 40-bit encryption. The government sets these norms to make investigation easy for antisocial element activities on social networking sites and messenger applications.
But contrary WhatApp introduced 256-bit Encryption, and the white papers Whatsapp released on encryption clearly indicates that it is highly impossible to decrypt messages, photos, videos exchanged through Whatsapp conversation.
While introducing encryption Whatsapp itself mentioned that they don’t store the decryption key on their server, for any message exchanged through Whatsapp.
Terrorist attacks and other antisocial activities growing rapidly in recent times. Terrorist groups using advanced technology more efficiently than normal users. Whatsapp treats end-to-end encryption as a great privacy measure for its users, but this stops the investigative agencies to solve typical antisocial activities.
The Indian Encryption Policy sets the encryption norms for cellular operators and ISPs only. As per the law technically it doesn’t effect OTT players like Whatsapp. But the Law is for the common good, when the situations demand amendments to the existing Law; OTT players will also come under the purview of the Law.
I’m eagerly waiting for the Judgement on Sudhir Yadav’s petition in the Supreme Court.
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