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But if you want to look at content, no,” Bellovin told Entrackr. To some extent, metadata-who talked to whom, and the length of included media-is a substitute. “It depends on what you’re trying to trace. Bellovin, who is a noted cryptographer and teaches computer security at Columbia University, enabling traceability on platforms like WhatsApp and Signal is not possible, technically. Is traceability possible on platforms like WhatsApp and Signal without breaking end-to-end encryption?Īccording to Steven M. However, technical and legal experts believe that enabling traceability without breaking or at least undermining end-to-end encryption will not be possible and undermining encryption for one person will make every other person on these platforms vulnerable. But it does not specify how that can be achieved, and has left it to the platforms to figure out. The government is clear on what it wants: to know who sent a particular message on a messaging platform. To be sure, the Indian government does not require these platforms to break their end-to-end encryption per say. This provision is colloquially called ‘traceability’.

This means that even WhatsApp and Signal for instance can’t see the messages users share on their platforms.Īccording to India’s social media rules, messaging services with more than 5 million users in India like WhatsApp and Signal need to enable the identification of the first originator of a particular message. In simple terms, end-to-end encryption ensures that messages, calls, photos, and videos shared on messaging platforms can only be accessed by the sender and the receiver. What is end-to-end encryption and what does the Indian government want messaging platforms to do? The Indian government wants platforms like WhatsApp to identify the originator of messages, a move that WhatsApp says could break its end-to-end encryption security, jeopardising the sanctity of private communications on its platform.īetween secure and anonymous conversations on the internet and addressing issues like threats to national security and misinformation, this tussle throws up challenges both from technological and ethical standpoints.