Bengaluru: The government of India has said its position on traceability on WhatsApp has been “vindicated” following a Friday letter sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg by key officials of three countries. The letter largely dealt with concerns around Facebook’s privacy-centric plans, which include end-to-end encryption across its suite of messenger-based applications, including WhatsApp.In the letter signed by US attorney general William Barr, UK home secretary Priti Patel, acting US home secretary Kevin McAleenan , and Australia ’s minister for home affairs Peter Dutton, these officials wrote, “We are writing to request that Facebook does not proceed with its plan to implement end-toend encryption across its messaging services without ensuring that there is no reduction to user safety and without including a means for lawful access to the content of communications to protect our citizens.” The development was first reported by BuzzFeed News.This, senior Indian government officials said, validates India’s position on traceability in Facebook-owned WhatsApp, something it has been articulating since over a year, following several deaths due to mob lynching. “This validates our position on traceability, which we have been consistently articulating over the last one year. We were among the first to raise it globally. If anything, it has made our job easier now,” said an official from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).Inan interview to ET on Saturday, the union minister for electronics and information technology stated, “What I have been pushing for is being done by America, England, Australia and others. They are pushing for decryption.Now, we have global support as far as law enforcement is concerned, you have to do the decryption.”This letter, sources added, could also change the nature of the conversation between the Indian government and Facebook over the issue. Facebook, thus far, has been consistent in its view on traceability, with multiple officials of the Menlo Park-based social networking company saying that any measure to impose traceability could compromise WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption and its private nature.“If Facebook now tells us this cannot be done, we will refer them to the letter from their own Attorney General, since Facebook is a US-registered company. We will ask them what actions have they taken on that,” the official quoted earlier explained.“We believe in the right for people to have a private conversation online. End-toend encryption helps protect that right and is fundamental to the value we provide to over a billion people every day. We oppose government attempts to build backdoors because they would undermine the privacy and security of our users everywhere,” said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement. “We also respect the role law enforcement has in keeping people safe. Government policies like the CLOUD Act allow for companies to provide available information when we receive valid legal requests and do not require companies to build back doors,” the spokesperson added.Last month, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs met several Indian government officials.While traceability was raised in these meetings with the former UK deputy prime minister, sources maintained that WhatsApp reiterated its views on encryption. To be sure, this means that WhatsApp at best can share metadata about a conversation (who is speaking to whom etc), but has no way to know what content has been shared by the user, due to its end-to-end encryption nature.