India Orders GitHub to Take Down Jack Dorsey's Bitchat Amid Protests
India’s cybercrime agency (I4C) ordered GitHub to remove Bitchat’s source code, giving it three hours and citing the IT Act and 2021 IT Rules. The notice targeted three repositories for Jack Dorsey’s decentralized messaging app, including the main project and Android builds. I4C said Bitchat’s Bluetooth mesh design, which avoids internet, servers, phone numbers, and accounts, makes lawful interception and attribution difficult and could aid disorder, terrorism, organized crime, or use during internet shutdowns. The move comes amid youth protests over exam-paper leaks, where mobile internet has been cut and some demonstrators reportedly used offline tools like Bitchat. Dorsey and Bitchat supporters criticized the order as anti-freedom, and the Internet Freedom Foundation called it unconstitutional. Repositories were quickly mirrored elsewhere, underscoring that open-source code is hard to suppress completely.
