The Supreme Court on June 29 will be hearing a petition filed by Sudhir Yadav, a Haryana based RTI activist seeking a ban on WhatsApp. According to Yadav, the platform’s end-to-end encryption gives terrorists a means to communicate that is impossible to intercept.
According to the petition, the 256 bit encryption started by WhatsApp in the month of April this year, cannot be broken into. This can benefit terrorists and other illegal groups to communicate without being traced.
"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 de-cryption keys either," Yadav said in his petition.
The petition also demands a ban on other messaging apps using high encryption like Viber, Secure Chat, Hike, Telegram and Signal for aiding and abetting terrorists.