--- title: India orders GitHub to remove Jack Dorsey's Bitchat app,... description: India's Ministry of Home Affairs, through its cybercrime arm I4C, has ordered GitHub to remove three repositories for Bitchat — a Bluetooth-based mesh... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/india-orders-github-to-remove-jack-dorsey-s-bitchat-app-citing-surveillance-concerns-mvpznhfcs twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: India orders GitHub to remove Jack Dorsey's Bitchat app, citing surveillance concerns | daily.dev og:description: India's Ministry of Home Affairs, through its cybercrime arm I4C, has ordered GitHub to remove three repositories for Bitchat — a Bluetooth-based mesh... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/india-orders-github-to-remove-jack-dorsey-s-bitchat-app-citing-surveillance-concerns-mvpznhfcs og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/mVPzNHFCS.png og:image:alt: India orders GitHub to remove Jack Dorsey's Bitchat app, citing surveillance concerns og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # India orders GitHub to remove Jack Dorsey's Bitchat app, citing surveillance concerns **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 2 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary India's Ministry of Home Affairs, through its cybercrime arm I4C, has ordered GitHub to remove three repositories for Bitchat — a Bluetooth-based mesh messaging app by Jack Dorsey — within a three-hour window. The government's concern is that the app enables communication without internet, servers, or user registration, making surveillance impossible. The order coincided with student protests in New Delhi and internet shutdowns, during which Bitchat saw over 91,000 downloads in five days. Digital rights experts question the legal basis for targeting open-source code repositories rather than illegal content, and note that removing the repos wouldn't affect devices already running the app. As of Friday, GitHub had not confirmed receiving the notice and the repositories remained accessible. ## Content India's Ministry of Home Affairs sent GitHub a notice demanding three Bitchat repositories be taken down within three hours. The reason: the app works during internet shutdowns and can't be easily intercepted by authorities. The timing is not subtle. Student protests over alleged exam paper leaks were spreading across New Delhi, and Bitchat had hit 91,000+ downloads in India in just five days. The three-hour deadline came and went. The repositories stayed up. GitHub hadn't even confirmed receiving the notice. The legal debate is the more interesting part. Digital rights experts are pointing out that the government targeted open-source *code*, not specific illegal content — a meaningful distinction. Restricting a repository doesn't delete the app from phones already running it, and anyone who downloaded it before the deadline still has a fully functional copy. The Streisand effect did the rest: nothing drives downloads like a government trying to ban something. Brendan Eich amplified the reaction circulating online: "India gave GitHub THREE HOURS to delete BitChat. By the time the deadline hit, the app was already b..." — the implication being it had already spread beyond any practical point of containment. What's actually being debated here is whether governments can meaningfully suppress communication tools by going after their source code. The answer, at least in this case, appears to be no. Bitchat is a Bluetooth mesh app — it routes messages peer-to-peer without internet infrastructure, which is exactly why authorities want it gone and exactly why taking down a GitHub repo doesn't accomplish much. This is the tension that's going to keep coming up. Governments that rely on internet shutdowns as a protest-control tool are now facing apps specifically engineered to route around that. Jack Dorsey's name attached to the project guaranteed it would get attention; the Indian government's response guaranteed it would get even more. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [India disrupts access to popular developer platform Supabase with blocking order](https://daily.dev/posts/india-disrupts-access-to-popular-developer-platform-supabase-with-blocking-order-x9ggxcarx) · TechCrunch · 38 upvotes · 5 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#github](https://daily.dev/tags/github), [#bluetooth](https://daily.dev/tags/bluetooth) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/india-orders-github-to-remove-jack-dorsey-s-bitchat-app-citing-surveillance-concerns-mvpznhfcs) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"India orders GitHub to remove Jack Dorsey's Bitchat app, citing surveillance concerns","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/india-orders-github-to-remove-jack-dorsey-s-bitchat-app-citing-surveillance-concerns-mvpznhfcs","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/india-orders-github-to-remove-jack-dorsey-s-bitchat-app-citing-surveillance-concerns-mvpznhfcs"},"datePublished":"2026-07-24T17:52:46.178Z","dateModified":"2026-07-25T21:56:15.508Z","description":"India's Ministry of Home Affairs, through its cybercrime arm I4C, has ordered GitHub to remove three repositories for Bitchat — a Bluetooth-based mesh...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/f60c6ff54b779612f43fd856f484997c?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/f60c6ff54b779612f43fd856f484997c?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Collections","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Collections","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--fk_6ycEi--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780996001/logos/collections?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/india-orders-github-to-remove-jack-dorsey-s-bitchat-app-citing-surveillance-concerns-mvpznhfcs","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"open-source,github,bluetooth","timeRequired":"PT2M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Collections","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"India orders GitHub to remove Jack Dorsey's Bitchat app, citing surveillance concerns"}]} ```