NEW DELHI: Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Monday doubled down on the government’s stance that law enforcement agencies should be able to trace the source of fake news and those used to fuel violence, even on end-to-end encrypted platforms like WhatsApp.
“We respect encryption… But, where the same message is being relayed repeatedly at the same time, the same area and on the same issue in order to create chaos and spread false rumours, law enforcement agencies must have access.
"The source of this nuisance must be identified to deal with circulation of false rumours in such cases,” said Prasad at IMC 2019.
WhatsApp has so far been consistent in resisting the government’s demands to provide access to message sources on its platform. Its stance so far has been that the end-to-end encryption service on its platform does not enable even the firm to read messages sent on it.