India Orders GitHub to Remove Jack Dorsey's Bitchat Code Amid Protests
The cybercrime agency cited security concerns and the app's use in recent youth-led rallies over exam-paper leaks.
Hızlı Bakış
- India's cybercrime agency, I4C, ordered GitHub to remove the code for Jack Dorsey's decentralized messaging app Bitchat within three hours.
- The agency cited security concerns, potential exploitation during public disorder, and the app's use by protestors during recent exam-paper leak rallies.
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India's I4C ordered GitHub to remove Bitchat's code under IT Act provisions, citing the app's ability to impede lawful interception and its use in protests. This follows China's previous actions against the app.
India's cybercrime agency has ordered GitHub to take down the code for Bitchat, the decentralized messaging app built by Jack Dorsey, giving the Microsoft-owned platform three hours to comply.
The notice, issued Thursday by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs, named three repositories under the "permissionlesstech" account—the main Bitchat project, its Android build, and the Android releases page—and invoked Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, 2000 and Rule 3(1)(d) of the 2021 IT Rules. It told GitHub to "remove and disable access" to the code without vitiating any evidence.
Bitchat routes messages directly between nearby phones over Bluetooth mesh networks, with no internet, servers, phone numbers, or accounts—a design I4C said "significantly impedes lawful interception, attribution, and investigation." The agency warned the app could be exploited during "public disorder, riots, terrorism, organized crime, or internet shutdowns," and cited provisions of the IT Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, India's criminal code.
'Cockroach' protests
The order lands as India wrestles with a youth-led movement over exam-paper leaks. Tens of thousands have rallied in Delhi behind the satirically named Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed fast-track courts for officials accused of rigging exams. With mobile internet cut around Parliament and the Jantar Mantar protest site, demonstrators turned to offline tools such as Bitchat.
Dorsey, the former Twitter chief and Block CEO, posted the notice with a terse line that the "government of india does not like technologies like bitchat," while the Bitchat Community account said that “Governments that fear people talking without permission will always go after the tools that make it possible.” The Internet Freedom Foundation condemned the order as "unconstitutional and authoritarian," arguing it named no unlawful content and bypassed India's blocking procedures.
India is not the first state to move against the app. China ordered it pulled from Apple's App Store in April, echoing Beijing's 2023 ban on Dorsey's Nostr-based Damus. Removing an app from a store limits distribution, while removing the source code tries to kill a project outright—though open-source code can be freely copied and mirrored.
Açık Sorular
- Will GitHub comply with the three-hour deadline?
- What will be the Bitchat community's next steps?
- How will this impact other decentralized communication apps?
