Govt snubs WhatsApp's no, wants it to trace origin of fake news messages
Amid a spate of mob lynchings fuelled by misinformation, tracing the origin of fake messages has become a lingering tussle between the government and WhatsApp
Two days after WhatsApp CEO Chris Daniels met IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, the government has reiterated its demand that origin of fake messages should be traced and the Facebook-owned instant messaging platform should explore a technical solution for the same.
The assertion by the government came after WhatsApp said it will not weaken the privacy protections on the platform. "Requiring traceability would undermine end-to-end encryption and the private nature of WhatsApp, creating the potential for serious misuse," Carl Woog, WhatsApp spokesperson, said. It must be mentioned that after the meeting with Daniels, Prasad had briefed the media saying that WhatsApp would try to work out a technological solution for tracing the origin of any sinister message.
Tracing the origin of fake messages has been a lingering tussle between the government and WhatsApp. The company had earlier also expressed its inability to trace the origin of messages citing the privacy of consumers, thereby triggering a controversy. The government, on its part, has also made it clear to the American firm that platforms like WhatsApp cannot run away from their responsibility of checking the menace of fake news by citing privacy as an excuse.
Reiterating its stand, sources in the Electronics and IT Ministry on Thursday said WhatsApp should give a more firm assurance of compliance with Indian laws. The company should establish a grievance office with a wide network and set up an Indian corporate entity subject to Indian laws in a defined timeframe, a source said.
Regarding traceability, the source said, "(WhatsApp) should continue to explore technical innovations whereby in case of large-scale circulation of provocative and nefarious messages leading to violence and crime, the origin can be ascertained."
WhatsApp has been in talks with the government over the past couple of months regarding the issues of mob lynchings and the launch of its payment service. The company's Chief Operating Officer Matthew Idema had also met IT secretary Ajay Sawhney last month. To check viral circulation of messages, WhatsApp had recently announced that it would limit forwards of photos, videos and messages to five chats in India and remove the quick forward button next to media messages. Also, the platform is testing a label that marks links sent on chats as 'suspicious' in its bid to check the spread of fake news and misinformation.
Meanwhile, in a related development, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said that the government has taken a stern view of false news doing the rounds on social media platforms and asked WhatsApp to take urgent measures to curb the circulation of such messages. She, however, said the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) does not intend to impose a blanket ban on messaging apps and platforms.
"we cannot go around blocking the whole platform. The idea is to evolve effective grievance redressal...targeted prevention or corrective action to be taken in those kinds of cases," she said, when asked about abuse of messaging platforms in spreading fake messages. The DoT had recently sought views from industry players regarding banning of mobile apps like Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc, in situations where national security and public order were under threat.
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