Indian Govt Wants To Spy On Your WhatsApp & Social Media, By Trying To Tweak The IT Act Of 2000

Just a few days ago the Ministry of Home Affairs granted sweeping powers to 10 central agencies, allowing them to track, monitor and intercept data on every computer in the country.

Now, the government has turned its eye on online communications and social media as well. That includes all your WhatsApp messages and Facebook or Twitter data as well.

ALSO READ: Indian Government Will Ban WhatsApp In Country, If The App Doesn't Find A Way To Trace Hoaxes

The government has just proposed a set of amendments to the Information Technology (IT) Act, one with horrific implications for personal privacy in India. On the pretext of cracking down on "unlawful content", the government is effectively erasing any sense of privacy online and on social media.

For one thing, the amendment proposes ending the concept of end-to-end encryption. You know, the encryption on your WhatsApp chats that stops anyone except you and the other participant from intercepting messages and reading them. Yeah, it would make it so much easier for authorities to snoop on your personal chats, which is bad enough, but would also make it so much easier to get hack by a malicious actor.

In addition, it's proposed that "intermediaries" (chat service providers like Facebook, Twitter, Google etc) comply with government requests for data with 72 hours on a query. The government has also said it would be up to these intermediaries to deploy "automated tools" that could block access to unlawful content.

Big Brother¡¯ expands his lens to social media, moves to end ¡®end to end encryption¡¯, also legal backing for ¡®proactive monitoring¡¯ of user content.
Online platforms should give user information within 72 hours as asked by ¡®any government agency¡¯ - amendment to IT Act on the way ! pic.twitter.com/KRNMzxPElT

¡ª Arvind Gunasekar (@arvindgunasekar) December 24, 2018

If this reminds you of Section 66A of the IT Act that was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015, you're absolutely right. AT the time, it had allowed the government to arrest people that posted things they didn't like online.

If it also reminds you of China and its strict censorship laws, you're right about that too. The country can, at will, scrub content from social media and the like that they don't appreciate. After all, every scrap of information posted online runs through the government first. That's why you rarely see anything critical of the country's leadership. For example, they banned all images and mentions of Winnie the Pooh in China because people began making memes comparing his looks to that of President XI Jinping.

The IT act amendment still describes unlawful content as, among many other definitions, "blasphemous, ethically objectionable, and disparaging." Very vaguely defined terms that have of course never ever been abused to clamp down on anti-government sentiment.

And while this draft was apparently discussed on Friday with representatives of companies like Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Amazon, Twitter, and The Internet Service Providers Association of India, we've not heard a word from any of these big Internet companies.

Is the threat of being banned from India enough to push these groups to silently lend their support to the amendments? Probably. Should you be worried about your own personal freedom being taken away? Absolutely.