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After petition, SC dismisses plea seeking ban on WhatsApp

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The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a PIL urging it to ask the government to seek the private key from WhatsApp and similar applications to access their contents in times of need.

WhatsApp-AV
The petition has been dismissed by the bench of the CJI. Sudhir Yadav, a Haryana-based right-to-information (RTI) activist who had filed the plea, has been asked to approach the appropriate authority or tribunal.

The petition said WhatsApp has from April started to enable its every message with 256-bit encryption that cannot be broken into.

“Even if WhatsApp was asked to break through an individual’s message to hand over the data to the government, it too would fail as it does not have the decryption keys either,” said the petitioner.

Seeking a ban on WhatsApp in India, Yadav said any terrorist or criminal can safely chat on WhatsApp and make plans to harm the country and the Indian intelligence agencies would not be able to tap into their conversations to take necessary actions.

According to him, in order to decrypt any message on WhatsApp, experts would need a gigantic key combination, which is impossible for any super computer to decrypt, and if it managed to do so, it would take trillions of years.

Earlier, Sudhir had written letters to TRAI and Ministry of Communications and IT (according to Trak), before filing this petition, but received no reply in return.

However, now the apex court has asked the petitioner to approach Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT).

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