Some progress, but still a long road ahead for WhatsApp with govt

The past week was the second occasion the government met a WhatsApp chief executive. And, little seems to have changed, except positive commentary on the payments feature launch, which could be later this year. 

The government wishlist has been much the same since last August. That was when minister for information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad spoke to the previous WhatsApp chief executive, Chris Daniels, in this regard. Briefly, to establish a corporate entity in India, appoint a grievance officer and find a technical solution to trace the origin of fake messages on the platform. Also, that WhatsApp adhere to Indian laws. 

From government officials’ perspective, the messaging service has not fulfilled most of the earlier demands, while making a half-hearted attempt.

From WhatsApp’s side, it has made some effort to address these. It has hired an India head and expanded India operations. Also, focusing more on training and awareness to prevent misuse of the platform. It has revealed that India is its biggest market, with over 400 million users.

It also appointed a grievance officer for India, Komal Lahiri, who is based in the US.

A simple LinkedIn search shows nine job vacancies at WhatsApp. Including an anti-abuse specialist, a Trust & Safety Lead and India policy director. While meeting current head Will Cathcart, Prasad reiterated most of the earlier demands. With a focus on traceability of messages spread en masse through the platform, of a grievance officer based in India, and for cooperating with law enforcement requests to find the origin of messages, to prevent use by terrorists and anti-social elements.

Leading into our general elections this year, WhatsApp was embroiled in  controversy. The trouble escalated last year after a series of lynchings in different parts, fuelled by what were later found to be fake messages circulated on WhatsApp. Given the closed nature of WhatsApp, racially and politically incendiary messages continue to be shared across party lines through WhatsApp groups. Leading to increased pressure on WhatsApp to help trace the origin of such messages. 

Double-edged sword

“Criminals are very smart. They know messages cannot be traced on WhatsApp. So, they use platforms like this for all kinds of activity. WhatsApp’s so-called product changes have been bypassed by criminals, the five-message forward, for example. They (WhatsApp) should help us trace the location from where a message originated in cases of serious crime or decrypt messages in cases impacting national security,” said a serving director-general of police, requesting not to be named.

Encryption or the scrambling of data to make it unintelligible for even the service providers, has been an important tool to prevent government snooping. Technologists and privacy experts have always argued that breaking of encryption is the first step towards government surveillance on its own citizens. 

However, it has equally been abused for the spread of fake news and criminal activity. On Friday, the minister reiterated to Cathcart the demand to provide traceability of messages. Effectively, the breaking of encryption. Cathcart said WhatsApp is committed to the encryption built into the product. Last year, Prasad’s ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) proposed changes to the intermediary rules under the Information Technology Act. Some of which pertained to breaking of encryption in cases of national security. The changes have not been notified but most IT companies are bracing for the impact.

“We do not have any proper parliamentary oversight or judicial check on surveillance. The latest draft rules, if they go through, would be tremendous expansion in the power of the government over ordinary citizens, eerily reminiscent of China’s blocking and breaking of user encryption to surveil its citizens,” IT policy and digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation has said in comments to the ministry on the proposed changes.  

In 2017, The Guardian had reported the existence of a backdoor that allows access to WhatsApp messages, a claim e co-founder Brian Acton had denied vehemently. WhatsApp does not give governments a backdoor into its systems. Since April 2016, WhatsApp messages and calls are end-to-end encrypted by default. WhatsApp also offers people a security notifications feature that alerts them when people change keys, so that they can verify who they are communicating with, he had said, in a post on social networking platform Reddit. Acton and co-founder Jan Koum had quit last year over issues of disagreement on monetising of WhatsApp and weakening its privacy principles. 

Politics

The ruling BJP, the Congress and regional  parties all use WhatsApp extensively — coordination, planning, disseminating messages to a large follower base. In fact, in 2014, at the start of the first term of the BJP government, the party’s IT Cell had requested WhatsApp to increase the number of users allowed in a group from the 50 then permissible. The messaging app now allows the addition of 256 people to a group. 

The move to launch WhatsApp Pay has not been a smooth one for the firm. The government has raised concerns about the authentication mechanism used by the service. Also, on compliance with the RBI’s data localisation norms. The next time a WhatsApp chief visits India, the government would expect more concrete changes, to address some of these issues. 

WhatsApp said last October that it had built a local system to store payments-related data, to comply with RBI’s  requirement.

Though WhatsApp’s new CEO sounded confident of introducing payments in India soon, the company will have to still overcome some hurdles before it sees a full fledged launch.

The challenge lies in how well the messaging platform can help allay these concerns and give the Indian authorities a sense of constructive engagement.