WhatsApp Balks at India's Demand To Break Encryption (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: As WhatsApp scrambles to figure out technology solutions to address some of the problems its service has inadvertently caused in developing markets, India's government has proposed one of its own: bring traceability to the platform so false information can be traced to its source. But WhatsApp indicated to VentureBeat over the weekend that complying with that request would undermine the service's core value of protecting user privacy. "We remain deeply committed to people's privacy and security, which is why we will continue to maintain end-to-end encryption for all of our users," the company said.

The request for traceability, which came from India's Ministry of Electronics & IT last week, was more than a suggestion. The Ministry said Facebook-owned WhatsApp would face legal actions if it failed to deliver. "When rumours and fake news get propagated by mischief mongers, the medium used for such propagation cannot evade responsibility and accountability. If they remain mute spectators they are liable to be treated as abettors and thereafter face consequent legal action," the government said. India is WhatsApp's largest market, with more than 250 million users. The country is struggling to contain the spread of fake news on digital platforms. Hoax messages and videos on the platform have incited multiple riots, costing more than two dozen lives in the country this year alone. Allowing message tracing, though, would likely undo the privacy and security that WhatsApp's one billion users worldwide expect from the service. Bringing traceability and accountability to WhatsApp would mean breaking end-to-end encryption on the platform, the company told VentureBeat.

Comments

side with the authorities here

[gravewax]

India has a serious problem at the moment with malicious rumours spread by social media where the intent is to get people injured or killed. tracability with a warrant I don't see as a breach of privacy or security as the person put it out to the world for everyone to see intentionally anyway, no where does it say you have a right to anonymously causes such mischief. All WhatsApp need to do is attach unique identifiers to messages when created so that when forwarded they can be traced back to the source, obviously the police already have the message so they don't need to break encryption or breach anyones privacy, what they need to know is who started the whole shitshow X that got Y people murdered.

Re:side with the authorities here

[Anonymous Coward]

All WhatsApp need to do is attach unique identifiers to messages when created so that when forwarded they can be traced back to the source

This is sort of why separation of powers and freedom of speech is so very vital. Yes, your example would be a valid reason for a court order and tracing, if it were possible.

Of course, in a country where heads of state regularly assassinate political enemies, such tracing helps them too, and if there is a way to do it, a government can likely figure it out.

Even in the US we just had our leader threaten to cancel security clearances of those who spoke out against him, which for some in the private sector, who may do unrelated work that requires a security clearance, well, that would mean they are out of work for exercising freedom of speech. He has also threatened to open up libel laws and various other ways to get even. Any republican who speaks against him gets replaced and he has like a 90% approval rating among republicans who say they are defending freedom.

I'm not saying we shouldn't track these people down. I'm just saying you get the bad with the good. Encryption was originally classed as a munition, and in some ways it still is. Encryption these days is almost a requirement to be able to speak freely in some areas, since otherwise you might get reprisal from your boss or someone in government.

Hell look at Peter Strok (sp?) Admittedly they didn't use encryption. He just didn't think they would start searching all his work texts, but he was basically guilty of seeing Trump run for office, forming opinions, and not significantly letting those opinions affect his work. Certainly any aid in tracing a message back to its source could have far reaching consequences in the future.

Re:side with the authorities here

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand how that sounded like a good idea in your head, trust me, it is a slippery slope. News and ad board campaigns to teach the public is a better solution imho.

you mean the solution they have been trying for months and has been completely unsuccessful? accountability is the only way to prevent the spread of these types of rumours, remembering most of these rumours target specific very real fears that many in remote indian communities have.

Re:side with the authorities here

[Anonymous Coward]

you are misunderstanding. You do not need to record anything within the encryption or about the user and this doesn't provide any mechanism to view the messages themselves. merely a endpoint that the message originated from. the company has no keys to view the message so even if they wanted to they can't provide access to the message itself or for that matter it doesn't even need to record that the message was even sent, all they store is tracability endpoints. e.g. GUID 1 = client a, GUID 2 = client b, then when supplied with a warrant of who is GUID 2 they can say it is client b.

Re: side with the authorities here

[Anonymous Coward]

If an anonymous "tip off" with no evidence is enough to incite you to murder I have no sympathy

Re:side with the authorities here

[sjames]

I smell BS!

What'sApp is by no means anonymous. You can see exactly who sent you the message. So, the procedure is as follows. Arrest rioters. Access rioter's phones. See who sent them the message(s) that kicked off the riots. Get a warrant for those phones. Iterate that until you converge on the offender.

If that's not good enough, ask What'sApp to create What'sAppIndia which tells the user that due to demands from their government they (and only they) will have Big other invited to the party and if they don't like it, they should speak to their government about it.

Re: side with the authorities here

[Vinegar Joe]

you ill be disappointed to hear then many of the people injured or killed were foreigners not Indians. One of the common incidents is a small community is told the backpackers coming to their area are not backpackers but child kidnappers looking to steal children and sell them into slavery (another common problem in india). The village then pounces on the next unsuspecting foreigners that turn up and beat them to death, end result dead foreigners and poor people having their only bread winners sent to jail.

And you wonder why people might think India is a shithole?

Re:side with the authorities here

[johanw]

It would help a lot more if the US police stops acting like the German SS during WW2.

Re:side with the authorities here

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you actually read what the parent poster wrote?

If you gain the possibility to track villains, you gain the possibility to track dissidents and opponents as well.

It doesn't matter if you can *directly* see the message, just as it didn't matter with the text saying kidnappers are at large to steal your children. In both instances, once the cat is out of the bag, you could trace the message back to its origin. Whether it's a text of a scammer or of a whistleblower.

It's not difficult to comprehend, no?

Re: side with the authorities here

[Anonymous Coward]

No different to the US. US history is littered with such incidents, especially for African Americans and Indians and NO I don't mean ancient history, a few searches will bring up many modern incidents usually the results of redneck racists and the attitudes that people from elsewhere are "outsiders".

Re:side with the authorities here

[MMC Monster]

On the one hand this looks both reasonable and quite easy to implement.

On the other hand ... what if this wasn't India. What if this was an oppressive regime which wants to arrest/kill dissenters?

If they have the message ID of one person, they can track everyone that person was in contact with, identifying their entire "cell".

All they would need is a court order.

Re:side with the authorities here

[Mathinker]

> the only way

Citation needed. This whole thing is like the flame wars over "the solution to spam".

I have a different "solution". Hold the policeman of the village "accountable", instead.

Interesting, however that this is modded up. WTF?

Re: side with the authorities here

[Highdude702]

having your loved ones taken from you without warning any day or night to be sold into slavery, raped or murdered

You basically described CPS and poor people.

Re:side with the authorities here

[Mathinker]

> All WhatsApp need to do is attach unique identifiers to messages when created so that when forwarded they can be traced back to the source

Never heard of copy/paste, eh? Wow, this really, really reminds me of the "solution to spam" wars... Yes, I'm that old...

Re: side with the authorities here

[Kenneth Stephen]

Thank you. There is a lot of anger directed against the police in the US - much of it coming from their heavy handed tactics in law-enforcement. However, the key differentiator here is that their tactics aren't politically motivated. Comparing the police forces to that of more brutal regimes is not just a matter of degree (of oppression) - its also a bad comparison in terms of the rationale for the behavior.

Back on topic, I agree with the "accountability is the only thing" idea. Well....perhaps not the only thing, but in this case, its the thing thats needed to put out this fire before it consumes everything in its path. Anonymity is not a fundamental human right. It has value in certain contexts (like protecting dissent), but it also has downsides (as you can see in slashdot comments on this page itself - where there are many trolls as anonymous cowards who try to drag the rest of the posters down just because they can). Its a balance that someone has to strike, and in the absence of a specific law, one has to look at which causes the greater problem. In the short term, accountability will help a lot. It may even help with more problems than just lynchings - for example, what if the US military could now track down terrorists better because the messages they send are now traceable? In the long term, anonymity against law enforcement over the internet takes a big hit. I can live with that, because its something that was invented quite recently, and I'm not losing anything by it going away.

Another point to keep in mind is that privacy and some forms of anonymity already existed pre-internet, and they were carefully weighed and considered within the legal system. Reporters can keep their sources private. Doctors have doctor-patient confidentiality. Religious confidentiality is honored. But there are exceptions to all these, that the court system has deliberately breached with the public interest in mind. And the world hasn't ended.

Re:side with the authorities here

[PPH]

what they need to know is who started the whole shitshow

It was started by Vishnu.

Really, this is an insoluble problem. Because the purpose of religion is to cultivate unquestioning followers. And any attempt to punish their leaders or remove their ability to SWAT an enemy is going to be met with at least as much violence as the occasional butchered cow.

Re: side with the authorities here

[farble1670]

No different to the US. US history is littered with such incidents

Dude, this isn't US v. India. Everyone here that hasn't murdered someone because social media said so is free to judge those that do as retarded monsters. Because they are. No matter where they live.

Re:Medium isn't the problem

[The Cynical Critic]

The difference between traditional meatspace services like the mail is that they're at least to some extent traceable and will actively co-operate with authorities when their services are used for malicious purposes. What the Indian government isn't asking whatsapp to start being selective about who gets to use their platform, what they're asking for is making communication on the service more traceable so that they can track deadly hoaxes back to their originator and put a stop to those hoaxes by putting said people behind bars.

I'm not saying that the traceability of meatspace services is always perfect, the post office couldn't track down Ted Kaczynski when he was using them to deliver his mail bombs, but at least they took an active part in the taskforce that eventually brought him to justice and were never blamed for facilitating his rampage. I personally haven't heard of a single time a mail service has been blamed for facilitating things like poison or bomb letters and their use goes way back. Even the suffragettes sent letters with ink that corroded the mailboxes or were just plain poisonous and even sent very crude firebombs with white phosphorous (which ignites on contact with air) in easily breakable glass containers.

Either way, the thing about anything that helps trace the origin of something can both be abused and used for very legitimate purposes so if you understand the concept of nuance you're not going to have an extremist "nothing should be traceable" or "everything should be traceable"-outlook on this.

India's Governing Party Trolls

[PineHall]

India's governing party is guilty of trolling and fake news on WhatsApp so this is all about control.

He [Mahaveer Prasad Khileri] is a former troll for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or the BJP. “At that time, poison was in my mind,” he said.

Khileri was recruited by two acquaintances into the party’s social media operation in February 2014, just as Modi was racing to become India's next prime minister. He was given eight cell phones and ID’s for six different Facebook identities, he recalled in an interview in his home village of Jogaliya. He worked 18-hour days, toggling between legitimate campaign work and trolling of opponents and journalists, he said. When Modi won, the operation evolved as well, transitioning to a tool supporting Modi’s government.

Khileri worked in what the BJP calls its ‘IT Cell,’ which effectively operated as an ad hoc troll farm, he said. The development of the cell in the world's largest democracy occurred around the same time that American authorities believe Russia began using such techniques to influence the 2016 presidential election. The researchers contributing to the institute and Google reports found similar timing in different countries and under various circumstances.

According to Khileri, the Indian version of the trolling toolkit included strategies meant to inflame sectarian differences, malign the Muslim minority and portray Modi as savior of the Hindus. Supervisors would set themes for the day and specify targets to attack. Khileri and 300 other paid trolls would create memes or cut-and-paste Twitter posts that were sent to WhatsApp groups of tens of thousands of party loyalists. Their reposts sent hashtags viral in minutes.

“Muslims slaughter cows, so we’d tell them, ‘When Modi comes, we will slaughter you,’” Khileri recalled. “We’d tell Hindus: ‘If you don’t vote for Modi, then Muslims will destroy you.’”