Chandigarh: The online messaging giant Whatsapp recently rolled out end-to-end encryption, which means that the whatsapp messages turn more secure. Various reports in Indian media notes that the Whatsapp move has worried Indian “security agencies” as these agencies may now find to hard to snoop into the communications of Whatsapp users.
An India Today report notes that: [t]he just-introduced end-to-end encryption of WhatsApp will protect texts and voice calls and gives no access to the security agencies, making it much tougher for them to tackle any situation arising out of messages, videos being circulated through the messaging service.
“The move is a potential security threat,” India Today quotes an unnamed security official.
As per media reports the security agencies would be taking up the matter with the Telecom ministry to ensure that proper safeguards are in place before the services could be allowed in the country.
It may be recalled that in the past, the Indian government had red-flagged BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS), BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES) of smartphone maker Research-In-Motion (RIM) until the company installed a server within India to make it possible for Indian security agencies to snoop into user’s private messages in real-time.