NSAB Came Up With A Solution To Make WhatsApp Messages Traceable

As the Indian government is asking WhatsApp to make messages on the platform traceable, NSAB (short for National Security Advisory Board) has found a potential solution to meet that request.

The NSAB is also the security advisor for the PMO (Prime Minister’s office), and they have contacted the company to ask for help to make tracing messages possible without violating the platform’s encryption feature.

V Kamakoti, a professor at IIT Madras and also a member of NSAB, said that the technology they were proposing could enable WhatsApp to give out the senders’ phone numbers:

He also shared that the sender’s number would be public when the encrypted message was sent multiple times so that the recipients could verify what the message is trying to say. In this way, the messaging platform would not be involved. However, this method was built on the assumption that the recipients would want to verify the content, which is highly unlikely.

This proposal is put forward after the Indian government asked for the traceability of all messages on the platform, which stems from the rumors and fake news that led to lynchings last year. Since then, the platform has been under pressure of the authority to make messages traceable.

The MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) also asked WhatsApp to find a way to know the origin of incendiary messages. In response to these requests, the company has denied them all, arguing that traceability would violate its encryption process.

The company also said that allowing messages to be traced would have a negative impact on the privacy of users. To meet the request of the government, the entire architecture of the backend would have to be changed.