After petition, SC dismisses plea seeking ban on WhatsApp

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a petition to ban WhatsApp messenger, which was filed by Haryana-based Right to Information (RTI) activist Sudhir Yadav. 

Read: Ban WhatsApp in India: Petition filed in Supreme Court

The petition was filed under the registration number DOTEL/R/2016/50413 last month, after the Facebook-owned messaging platform introduced 256 bit End-to-End encryption, which is practically impossible to decode.

Yadav raised concerns over the encryption issue as he felt that the platform would become a safe haven for terrorists and other criminal conspirators, who would be freely able to chat on the platform without any consequences.

 Read: WhatsApp end-to-end encryption: a boon or bane?

He had also mentioned that messaging platforms such as Hike, Secure Chat, Viber and a few others are also in the same zone for high encryption and causing national threat.

"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," the petitioner said.

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).