India's cyber crime coordination centre gave GitHub three hours on 23 July to remove the code for Bitchat, the Bluetooth messaging app built by Jack Dorsey's team. Notice number 11072601011432 landed at 11.16pm, directing the platform to remove and disable access to three repositories while preserving evidence, and warning of lost safe harbour and criminal prosecution. The application had become useful in Delhi because the government was switching off mobile internet.The document, published on X by Block CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, bears the name of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, or I4C, under the Ministry of Home Affairs. It targets the main Bitchat repository, its Android repository and the page from which Android users can download release files.About The AuthorAt heart, I am a storyteller drawn to the watershed moments that bend the technology landscape. I braid narrative with data, humanise statistics, and trace the arc from first spark to world-changing impact. My reportage, features and reviews are witty, sardonic, visual and vivid, using anecdote to illuminate rather than eviscerate.
As a technology journalist with over sixteen years of experience, I have travelled the world and the seven seas, covered every major tech conference worth its lanyard, chronicled the defining breakthroughs of the last decade and a half, and played a pivotal role in launching some of India’s most important technology publishing platforms across web, print and TV.
