On July 24, a government takedown order became the open-source world’s main topic of conversation: India’s Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Ministry of Home Affairs, wrote to GitHub demanding the removal of repositories tied to Bitchat, the Bluetooth messaging app built by Jack Dorsey. Dorsey himself posted screenshots of the notice on X, writing that “the Government of India does not like technologies like Bitchat and wants it taken down.” What was ordered down was not a post or an account — it was open-source code.
A Three-Hour Takedown Order
According to the notice obtained by The Hindu and Decrypt, I4C wrote to GitHub on July 23 and gave the platform three hours to disable three repositories under the permissionlesstech account: the main Bitchat project, its Android build, and the Android releases page. The legal basis cited is Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, 2000, and Rule 3(1)(d) of the 2021 IT Rules — the standard provision that strips platforms of safe-harbor protection if they fail to remove flagged content. As of this writing, Microsoft, GitHub’s parent, has not confirmed full compliance. GitHub, for its part, said it handles government requests transparently, notifies account owners, offers an appeal path, and publishes the records.
Why Bitchat: Messaging Without the Internet
Bitchat is the open-source messaging app Dorsey launched in 2025. It relays encrypted messages hop by hop between nearby devices over Bluetooth Low Energy — no internet, no servers, no phone numbers, no accounts. That property makes it useful exactly where networks are switched off, which is the background of this case.
In late July, Delhi saw youth-led “Cockroach Janta Party” protests over exam paper leaks. After police suspended mobile internet around Parliament and Jantar Mantar, demonstrators switched to Bluetooth messaging apps to coordinate. The notice argues that such decentralized, peer-to-peer architectures “significantly impede lawful interception, attribution, and investigation,” and could be misused to coordinate unlawful assemblies, spread misinformation, or conspire criminally. Notably, police have not confirmed that Bitchat itself was used for anything unlawful — what is being targeted is a capability, not a proven act. Bluetooth mesh apps occupy a narrow but important niche: they are the last channel standing when a government turns connectivity off, which is precisely why shutdown orders and app takedowns tend to arrive together.
The Legal Basis and Platform Responsibility
India’s censorship mechanism runs on the incentive structure of safe harbor: a platform that does not remove notified content becomes legally liable for it itself. GitHub’s choice is a concrete business calculation — three repositories under one account, weighed against the operating risk for the entire platform in India.
The digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation called the takedown “unconstitutional and authoritarian,” pointing out that the notice names no unlawful content, only the software’s capabilities. That is the hardest part of this case: India’s constitutional free-speech protections are built around “speech,” and whether code counts as speech, or capability counts as content, is a question Indian legal practice has not settled. Section 79 of the IT Act is the pivot: platforms enjoy immunity for third-party content only as long as they remove material once notified by the government. That design gives takedown orders the force of an ultimatum — comply, or own everything on your servers. It is the same lever used in earlier disputes over speech, now pointed at a repository instead of a post.
When the Censor’s Target Is Open-Source Code
The long-term significance of this episode outweighs the fate of any single app. First, what was ordered down is code and release files, not a specific message; reviewing code as “content” is becoming a routine operation on major platforms. Second, the effect is close to nil: within hours, the repositories had been mirrored to the decentralized platform GitLawb — once code is public, it does not go back in the bottle. Third, this is not a first: China ordered Bitchat pulled from Apple’s App Store in April, and India has now pushed the battlefield onto the code-hosting platform itself.
The lesson for developers is practical: hosting your project on a centralized platform means jurisdiction risk is real. When your software’s “capabilities” collide with a government’s enforcement imagination, the notice may come with a three-hour deadline. Backup mirrors and portable release channels are shifting from nice-to-have to baseline infrastructure.
Sources
- The Hindu: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat
- Decrypt: India Orders GitHub to Take Down Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat Amid Protests
- India Today: CJP protests: India tells GitHub to block Bitchat app, Jack Dorsey leaks notice
AI-assisted summary compiled from the sources above, reviewed by a human before publishing.