Indian Govt. asked for Digital Fingerprint Traceability of WhatsApp Messages

WhatsApp Meaasages Traceability

Image: WhatsApp

Since few last months Whatsapp keep improving and changing its features for privacy concerns. Indian government has asked whatsapp earlier to keep eye on the matter of fake news that spreads through their medium and brought some technique to discard these types of troubles. Recently Indian government has asked Whatsapp messaging application to ensure traceability of all matter shared on whatsapp platform.

 Indian government officials reportedly asked that there should be a mechanism to identify where the message is generated and how many people have read and forwarded it without having to read the message. As per government officials, “this step is taken by them because of the cases of misinformation and rumours around child kidnapping and violent videos on the platform led to series of lynching events across India since few years”.

To find the origination of the message, Facebook owned Whatsapp messaging app will have to introduce digital fingerprint on messages without breaking the encryption.  But Whatsapp has maintained its statement that its end-to-end encryption does not allow the traceability. Government has notified guidelines in draft amendments of information technology act in 2018, it requires all the internet platforms to ensure traceability of the origin of all content shared through them.

Related Article: No more fake news on WhatsApp

Redesigning Architecture

To introduce traceability of messages, Whatsapp has to redesign its architecture and create a database of messages shared and attached them with a unique fingerprint. According to digital rights experts it is not easy to digitally fingerprint each message. Traceability of messages affects the privacy and safeness of the public data and violence of protection of the private data.

Some countries like Singapore and Australia have passed the law regarding the traceability of fake news on internet plateforms and to give more government control on data by bypaasing the end-to end encryption.