WhatsApp has reportedly agreed to meet all demands that were made by the IT ministry expect one. The company has refused to add a feature that would allow it to trace the origin of a message.
According to a report by The Times of India, WhatsApp has told the government that it has no access to user data as it is end-to-end encrypted. The brand says that deriving such mechanism will strike at its key feature, which is none other complete privacy of the users. The report highlights that only a small fraction of the user data is temporarily stored offline and company stores no information on its servers.
The report says that the data that is temporarily stored is on the users’ device. The report further says that Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Law and Justice & Information Technology, Government of India, had asked the Messaging company to set up a corporate office in India along with a compliance officer. The company has assured the government that “it is ready to work with regulators and law enforcement authorities to block sources that generate objectionable content.”
Earlier, the government told WhatsApp that it does not commit itself to the traceability of the messages. The government warned WhatsApp that the absence of adequate checks will leave the government no other options but to treat the application as ‘abettor’ of rumour propagation and it will take legal action against the company. WhatsApp has told the government that is currently building a local team as a part to check the circulation of fake news.