Karnataka High Court Orders Centre to Block Proton Mail

Proton Mail, which uses end-to-end encryption to safeguard customer data, has been ordered to be blocked in India by the Karnataka High Court. A Bar and Bench article claims that during the hearing of a petition submitted by M Moser Design Associates India, Justice M Nagaprasanna made the directives.

The email service was allegedly used to send offensive emails about the petitioner's employees, according to the plea, which also stated that investigations are impossible due to the anonymity of the site.

To impose the blocking order, the court cited Rule 10 of the 2009 blocking rules and Section 69A of the IT Act, 2008. The petitioner contended that Proton Mail does not require identity verification and enables users to evade Indian surveillance.

The request claimed that Proton Mail poses a concern to national security and was also used to make recent bomb threats, citing media sources.

Not Following India’s Guidelines

Advocate Jatin Sehgal argued on behalf of the petitioner, claiming that the Proton Mail website offers guidance on how to avoid being monitored by Indian authorities. Additionally, he underlined that there is no need for any kind of ID verification and that creating a Proton ID only takes 30 seconds.

During the hearing, the Center's attorney informed the court that any cooperation from Swiss authorities—where Proton is headquartered—must be initiated by a trial court and go through the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).

Until the Proton Mail website in India is blocked, the HC ordered the immediate removal of the "offensive" URLs listed in the petition. Proton Mail is under increasing pressure in India as a result of the most recent instance.

Bomb Threats Emails Sent Using the Proton Mail

After 13 Chennai schools received fictitious bomb threats using Proton Mail in February of this year, the Tamil Nadu police petitioned the Union IT ministry to block the service nationwide.

The local law enforcement agencies claimed that they were unable to determine the origin of the emails at the time due to the Swiss company's lack of cooperation and the service's end-to-end encryption.

Then the IT ministry accepted a block order after the Section 69A blocking committee recommended it. In the past, Proton Mail and Centre also had disagreements.

It withdrew its physical servers from India in 2022 in opposition to new CERT-In rules requiring cloud service providers and VPNs to retain data. According to the corporation, the Telecommunications Act of 2023 is a "threat to democracy", and the country's monitoring regulations are "regressive".