{"id":33461,"date":"2023-03-16T02:53:15","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T21:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=33461"},"modified":"2025-04-19T22:33:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T17:03:59","slug":"whatsapp-threatening-to-leave-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/whatsapp-threatening-to-leave-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"WhatsApp threatening to leave the U.K."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Why in news?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>News Summary: WhatsApp threatening to leave the U.K.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>What is end-to-end encryption?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>What is the Online Safety Bill (OSB)?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>What if the platforms don\u2019t comply?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Did India enact a similar law?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>What has been the response of WhatsApp to Indian law?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why in news?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Recently, WhatsApp\u2019s head Will Cathcart said that WhatsApp would not comply with the U.K.\u2019s proposed Online Safety Bill (OSB).<\/li>\n<li>The proposed bill will in effect outlaw end-to-end (E2E) encryption.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>News Summary: WhatsApp threatening to leave the U.K.<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h2><strong>What is end-to-end encryption?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>E2E encryption ensures that a message can only be decrypted by the intended recipient using a secure decryption key.\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>The decryption key is unique to each sender-recipient pair and to each of their messages.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Decryption, even by the messaging service provider, is impossible.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Even if the platform\u2019s servers are compromised, without the intended recipient\u2019s decryption key, only a garbled string of characters will be available.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Over the last few years, E2E encryption has been steadily gaining ground.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>It is offered by default on WhatsApp, Signal, Apple\u2019s iMessage and FaceTime and is an option on Meta\u2019s Messenger and Telegram.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What is the Online Safety Bill (OSB)?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Online Safety Bill is a proposed British legislation that seeks to improve online safety by placing <u>certain duty of care obligations on online platforms<\/u>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Controversial provision of OSB<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>OSB empowers the British telecommunications regulator to issue notices to most kinds of internet service providers, including private messaging apps and search engines, to identify and take down:\n<ul>\n<li>terrorism content that is communicated publicly and\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Child Sex Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA) content that is communicated publicly or privately.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The clause also requires the platforms to prevent terrorism and CSEA content from being communicated using the platforms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Why there is controversy around these provisions?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Although, these provisions do not mandate removal of E2E encryption.<\/li>\n<li>However, it would de facto mean breaking it as messaging apps would have to scan all messages that are sent on their platform to flag and take down terrorist and CSEA content.<\/li>\n<li>Under these clauses, WhatsApp would have to implement a client-side scanning mechanism to scan content on users\u2019 devices before it is even encrypted.<\/li>\n<li>For this, they would need to rely on algorithms that are not very sophisticated and do not understand context.\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>E.g., in 2021, Google automatically blocked a father\u2019s account in San Francisco and reported him to the local police.<\/li>\n<li>This is because he had shot videos of his toddler son\u2019s infection in intimate areas to share with his son\u2019s doctor during the pandemic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Critics view this Bill as a disproportionate step that allows the <u>state to mandate bulk interception and surveillance<\/u>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What if the platforms don\u2019t comply?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>If platforms do not comply, they may face penalties of up to \u00a318 million or 10% of the platform\u2019s global revenue of the preceding accounting year, whichever is higher.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Currently, the Bill has been passed by the House of Commons and a House of Lords committee is examining the Bill.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Once the committee\u2019s report is ready, it will go back to House of Lords for a third reading.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Did India enact a similar law?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Indian government had notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.<\/li>\n<li>Through these rules, the Indian government made it mandatory for <strong>messaging platforms with more than five million users<\/strong> in India to <u>enable the identification of the first originator of a message, or what is commonly called traceability<\/u>.<\/li>\n<li>This is not the same as asking for scanning and flagging of all encrypted content.\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>It is about getting to the first person who sent a message that may have been forwarded multiple times.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What has been the response of WhatsApp to Indian law?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>In India, WhatsApp did not threaten to leave the market. It instead, sued the Indian government over the traceability requirement.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>This is mainly because India, with <u>487.5 million WhatsApp users, is home to 22% of the platform\u2019s 2.24 billion monthly active users.<\/u>\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>WhatsApp\u2019s penetration rate in India is over 97% while in the U.K., it is at about 75%.\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>Moreover, the U.K., with 40.4 million users accounts for little less than 2% of global users.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1) What is WhatsApp?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>WhatsApp is a free messaging and voice over IP (VoIP) application that allows users to send text messages, voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share various types of media, including photos, videos, and documents, over the internet.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It was founded in 2009 by Jan Koum and Brian Acton and was later acquired by Facebook in 2014. WhatsApp has become one of the most popular communication apps globally, with over 2 billion monthly active users in over 180 countries.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Q2)<\/strong> <strong>What is Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 are a set of guidelines and rules introduced by the Indian government to regulate digital content and social media platforms.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The rules aim to provide a framework for intermediaries (which include social media platforms, messaging apps, search engines, and other online intermediaries) to regulate content on their platforms and to establish a code of ethics for digital media.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Source:\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/technology\/explained-why-is-whatsapp-threatening-to-leave-uk\/article66620220.ece#:~:text=This%20is%20mainly%20because%20India,than%202%25%20of%20global%20users.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Explained | Why is WhatsApp threatening to leave the U.K.?<\/u><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/business\/2022\/12\/10\/whatsapp-raises-threat-uk-shutdown-encryption-row\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Telegraph<\/u><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.standard.co.uk\/tech\/whatsapp-encryption-uk-online-safety-bill-b1046586.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Evening Standard<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The proposed Online Safety Bill (OSB) by the UK will in effect outlaw end-to-end (E2E) encryption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":33462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}