Tech Firms Face India Data Order -- WSJ
January 15 2020 - 3:02AM
Dow Jones News
By Newley Purnell and Krishna Pokharel
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (January 15, 2020).
NEW DELHI -- An Indian court ordered Facebook Inc.'s WhatsApp
and Alphabet Inc.'s Google to preserve data connected to an attack
on a university campus earlier this month in the latest attempt by
authorities in the country to wrangle more control over the
messaging and search giants.
According to an attorney involved in the case, the Delhi High
Court said Tuesday that the companies, local police and university
authorities must try to save messages, photos and videos connected
to the Jan. 5 attack, when several dozen people stormed the campus
of New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, injuring 32 students
and two faculty members.
The attack on what is seen as one of India's most liberal
universities came as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya
Janata Party has aggressively pushed a series of measures the
party's Hindu nationalist base has long sought. Critics say these
policies are discriminatory and undermine India's tradition of
religious tolerance.
The investigation into the attack is being closely followed in
India, where weeks of large-scale protests have been held against a
controversial new citizenship law recently passed by the
government.
Abhik Chimni, a lawyer for three professors from the university
who had petitioned the court, said attackers used WhatsApp groups
to plan the assault and access to the chats could help identify the
attackers and their motivations.
"We want those behind these groups and the attack on the
students and teachers at JNU to be held responsible," Mr. Chimni
said.
Facebook and Google didn't immediately respond to questions
about the court's decision.
WhatsApp has consistently said that messages exchanged on its
platform are encrypted, unreadable in transit, and can't be seen by
authorities or WhatsApp itself. WhatsApp has more than 400 million
users in India, which is its largest market.
Rumors spread on the platform in recent years have led to mob
violence in India. The company has previously clashed with the
Indian government over access to users' messages.
With its 1.3 billion people, only about half of whom are yet
online, India is the world's biggest untapped tech market, with
inexpensive smartphones and mobile data fueling a boom in
e-commerce, social-media consumption, music and video
streaming.
Unlike China, which put up barriers to American companies, India
has been relatively open to foreign players. But New Delhi has
begun making life more difficult U.S. companies, which now dominate
the market.
On Monday, the country's antitrust watchdog ordered an
investigation into whether Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.'s
Flipkart have violated competition laws. After Walmart in 2018
signed a $16 billion deal to acquire online-shopping startup
Flipkart, India tweaked its rules governing how foreign-owned
e-commerce companies sell goods online.
Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell@wsj.com and Krishna
Pokharel at krishna.pokharel@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 15, 2020 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)
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