Block encrypted mail service Proton Mail, Karnataka high court orders Centre

BENGALURU: The Karnataka high court on Tuesday ordered the union government to block ‘Proton Mail’, which uses end-to-end encryption to protect user data.

The order was passed by a bench of justice M Nagaprasanna on a petition by Bengaluru based firm, M Moser Design seeking a direction to the union ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) to ban the encrypted mail service after its employees and clients received emails with morphed pictures, AI generated deepfake images, and sexually explicit content.

In its order, the high court, which had previously reserved the verdict, told the government “to issue proceedings in terms of Section 69A of IT Act 2008 read with rule 10 of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking Access Of Information By Public) Rules, 2009 to block Proton Mail.”

The high court’s detailed order is awaited.

During arguments earlier, additional solicitor general Aravind Kamath told the high court that while the investigating officer could follow the provisions of the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita and request the court to issue a letter rogatory in line with the ‘mutual legal assistance treaty’ signed between India and Switzerland, the central government would comply with any specific blocking order issued by the high court.

To be sure, MeitY had previously considered blocking Proton Mail in India following hoax bomb threats to Chennai schools, but the blocking order was not issued following intervention by Swiss authorities. At the time, Proton Mail had questioned the utility of blocking the mail service, calling it a “misguided measure”. “Blocking access to Proton is an ineffective and inappropriate response to the reported threats. It will not prevent cybercriminals from sending threats with another email service and will not be effective if the perpetrators are located outside of India,” the company said in a statement emailed to HT in February 2024.

Justice Nagaprasanna, who had gone through the mails that had been received by the Bengaluru firm’s employees, had earlier asked the union government why it could not block all instant messaging services and Virtual Private Networks (VPN) that do not have physical servers in India and are not amenable to Indian laws.

The firm said the local police had approached Proton to ascertain the users who had used the encrypted mail to send the offensive messages but the email company had declined to share any information.

Jatin Sehgal, who appeared for the petitioner, had told the court that Proton Mail guided users how to bypass monitoring by authorities in India and that it declared that it had removed physical VPNs from India in 2022 after the union government made it mandatory for VPN providers with servers in India to store user data.

The court had then said it was inclined to exercise its jurisdiction under Section 482 of the criminal procedure code and pass orders.