India Orders Dorsey's Bitchat Takedown Over Protests
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- India's Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre ordered GitHub to remove three repositories tied to Bitchat under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, giving the Microsoft-owned platform a three-hour deadline to comply with the late-Thursday notice.
- Bitchat, the offline Bluetooth mesh app Dorsey released as open source in July 2025, relays encrypted messages and bitcoin transactions phone-to-phone without internet, servers, accounts, or phone numbers.
- Authorities cited Bitchat's decentralized architecture in the notice as "significantly imped[ing] lawful interception, attribution, and investigation by law enforcement agencies" because it enables anonymous communication without centralized logging.
- Delhi's "Cockroach Janta Party" student protesters, rallying since July 20 against a national exam scandal, have faced tear gas, baton charges, and repeated internet shutdowns around protest sites in New Delhi.
- GitHub compliance was unclear as of Asian afternoon hours Friday; CoinDesk could still download Bitchat from Google and Apple stores, and experts noted open-source projects are typically mirrored across hosts beyond a single platform.
- Jack Dorsey responded to the order on X, writing that "the government of india does not like technologies like bitchat and wants it taken down," with GitHub having previously removed repositories under Indian legal orders.
Why it matters: The order is the first documented case of a state invoking IT Act Section 79(3)(b) against an offline mesh tool while protesters are actively using it, but the practical impact is limited: Bitchat remained downloadable on major app stores Friday, and open-source code is typically mirrored beyond any single host. The precedent matters more than the takedown itself — it signals India's Home Ministry is willing to treat decentralized Bluetooth communication as an intercept impediment on par with non-state money transmission.
