Thursday, 28 November 2019

Pegasus: India may cite WhatsApp breach to store data locally

In this photo illustration, the Whatsapp logos is seen on a Huawei smartphone with the word Data breach on a laptop monitor.
Last month, WhatsApp revealed that Indians were among 1,400 people worldwide affected by the cyber-attacks in April and May
Indian officials are likely to cite the WhatsApp snooping controversy to push through a plan to compel digital companies to store data of Indian users locally, multiple reports say. 

Tech experts confirmed that multiple government departments and agencies have proposed such demands.

It was "a serious issue of national security", and "requires measures, including data localisation", officials were quoted as saying.


Experts called it a "bizarre response". "This makes no sense at all. The location of the data had nothing to do with the Pegasus breach," technology expert Prasanto K Roy told the BBC.

"WhatsApp was very transparent about the breach and reported it to the authorities. What is important now, is to find out who did it and how."
"Data localisation completely goes against the whole concept of the internet which is a global network," he added.

Reports have quoted government officials as saying that they wanted user data stored locally as the Pegasus breach "compromised national security"
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