India threatens jail for Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter employees

The threats mark an intensification of India’s efforts to pressure U.S. technology companies at a time when these companies are looking to grow the world’s second most populous nation in the coming years.

Some of the government data requests involve WhatsApp, which is very popular in India and promises users encrypted communication, which cannot be read by third parties.

A WhatsApp spokesman said the company complies with data requests that are “consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights, due process and the rule of law.” A Facebook spokesman said the company “responds to government data requests in accordance with applicable law and our terms and conditions.”

Twitter “will continue to uphold the fundamental principles of the open Internet,” a company spokesman said, adding, “Threats to these principles are on the rise around the world, which is deeply worrying.”

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India did not respond to requests for comment.

India has been adopting new rules that give its leaders power over online discourse to an unmatched degree elsewhere in open societies, according to legal analysts.

The rules require technology companies to appoint executives resident in India to respond to government requests, including a contact person for “24×7 coordination with police agencies and officers to ensure compliance” with the orders, according to the rules.

The rules would also oblige companies to remove content that harms national security, public order, and “decency or morality.”

Some companies, such as WhatsApp, also need to help identify the originator of messages. A government representative said the rules would require platforms to track and store logs of specific messages as they travel among users.

“Somehow, you will know if a message is going viral or not,” Rakesh Maheshwari, director of cyber law at the IT Ministry of India, said at a Zoom forum organized by an Indian trade association on the Internet Thursday.

Greg Nojeim, a senior lawyer at the Washington Center for Democracy and Technology think tank, said the guidelines would require WhatsApp to archive what each user shares, robbing them of the absolute privacy provided by end-to-end encryption. one of the old application systems. user benefits.

“A large country, by adopting and enforcing these rules, could cause large messaging platforms to withdraw or not offer encrypted services worldwide,” Nojeim said.

Legal observers argue that the rules do not provide a clear legal way to challenge users ’requests for content removal or data provision. Under the legal system of India, such applications do not require the prior approval of a court.

Beyond the risk of arrests, non-compliance would also threaten the future of technology companies in a market of more than 1.3 billion people which, as they are closed outside of China, is key to their global growth.

Facebook and WhatsApp have more users in India than in any other country. Facebook said last year it would spend $ 5.7 billion on a new partnership with an Indian telecom operator to expand operations in the country, its largest foreign investment. India is also Twitter’s fastest growing global market and crucial for its expansion as growth slows in more developed countries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has already shown that it is willing to shut down popular social media platforms, banning last year TikTok, which had a much larger user base than Twitter, amid tensions with China.

Twitter in recent weeks blocked, unblocked and then re-blocked hundreds of accounts in India to post material that the Indian government deemed inflammatory. The company has said it refused to withdraw other accounts despite government orders.

According to the latest statistics made public by Google, Facebook and Twitter, companies regularly reject withdrawal requests and user data from India. Facebook platforms complied with half of the government’s orders of user data, Google with 58% and Twitter with 1%, figures well below global corporate averages. Resistance to future applications could violate the law.

The Indian government seems ready to fight. Delhi police, which reports to the country’s interior ministry, have arrested Indians who have allegedly collaborated with foreigners through Zoom, WhatsApp and Google documents in a “toolkit” of activism in the social media in support of protesting farmers. Police said the creation and promotion of the advisory sheet amounted to sedition.

All three companies declined to comment on requests for government data related to the incident. News Corp.,

owner of the Wall Street Journal publisher, Dow Jones & Co., has a business deal to supply news via Facebook. Dow Jones has a trade deal to supply video content via Twitter.

A judge released one of the activists on bail last month, attributing the charges against her to “the government’s wounded vanity.” However, the arrests serve as a warning to both Indian dissidents and foreign technology platforms, said Mo Dhaliwal, co-founder of the Poetic Justice Foundation, a Canadian volunteer-run nonprofit organization that created the version initial of the tool kit.

“They send signals to anyone who dares to organize or communicate through these tools that‘ if you do it again, we will find you, ’” Dhaliwal said.

Growing pressure has left technology companies in jeopardy, said Jason Pielemeier, policy director of the Global Network Initiative, a group focused on human rights and online privacy that is partially funded by technology companies.

“In a market the size of India, it’s hard to adopt the nuclear option, which is,‘ We won’t comply and if you block us, we’ll call your bluff or accept the consequences, ’” he said.

Pielemeier compared the Indian government’s demands regarding content, privacy and access to data with those made by the Chinese government before major Internet platforms withdrew from the country.

The Indian government has painted the platforms as part of a conspiracy, he said, adding, “The big difference between previous history and where we are now is that China has done well without these companies.”

Asked in recent years to tighten restrictions on U.S. technology companies, the Indian government has said it welcomes US companies, but that they must follow India’s regulations. Officials have said the government wants to protect Indian small businesses, protect user data and allow India’s own technology companies to grow.

Write to Jeff Horwitz to [email protected] and Newley Purnell to [email protected]