In the first of a two-part series, Forbes India explores how enabling identification of the source of viral messages in end-to-end encrypted platforms is likely to have a chilling effect on free speech, while not successfully curbing the spread of misinformation
Image: Shutterstock; Illustrations: Sameer Pawar
All proponents of end-to-end encryption have argued that traceability undermines the right to communicate anonymously on the internet, a feature that makes it easier for human rights activists, dissenters, people belonging to vulnerable and marginalised groups to be targeted by authoritarian states, malicious actors, and those in power.
In an interview with Forbes India before the Rules were notified, in response to a question about the feasibility of Kamakoti’s solution, Signal’s Marlinspike had said, “Anytime someone says something about escrow that just means that it is unencrypted. It is the same situation where you either have one or you don’t. Signal has been meticulously designed to keep your data in your hands instead of ours.” He mentioned how there are two ways of looking at security—computer security which is a “losing strategy for the last 30 years”, and information security wherein “information itself is encrypted”. The latter means that if they are stored on computers and computers cannot be secured, it does not matter as the information itself is secure. “I don’t think Prof. Kamakoti’s suggestion as stated is currently feasible. This is very definitional. When cryptographers say end-to-end encryption, we mean a very particular thing where to anyone except the sender and the receiver, messages should look like garbage, and an outsider should not be able to tell [beyond just traffic analysis] which message was sent to whom,” Dr Debayan Gupta, an assistant professor of computer science at Ashoka University, tells Forbes India. Gupta warns that the moment there is something that is sent along every message which can be tracked by WhatsApp, the definition of end-to-end encryption breaks. “In an ideal end-to-end encrypted scenario, if there are two messages that I can send to you, WhatsApp should not be able to know which message I sent to you,” he says.