The government’s emergency censorship order against Bitchat, a serverless, offline mesh app, highlights an escalating battle between state surveillance demands and resilient peer-to-peer code.
On July 23, 2026, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Ministry of Home Affairs, ordered Microsoft-owned GitHub to block public access to three repositories hosting Bitchat, an open-source messaging application developed under Jack Dorsey. The directive required GitHub to restrict access within three hours.
Invoking Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, and Rule 3(1)(d) of the 2021 IT Rules, authorities stated Bitchat’s architecture hinders lawful interception, raising concerns about its potential use to organize unlawful assemblies, bypass internet shutdowns, or spread misinformation during public order events. The order coincided with local internet suspensions in central Delhi during protests. Dorsey shared the notice on X on July 24, claiming the Indian government opposes such decentralized tech.
Bitchat operates via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) mesh networking, passing encrypted messages peer-to-peer without central servers, cellular networks, internet access, or user accounts. It also includes a store-and-forward mechanism capable of relaying offline Bitcoin transactions across the mesh until reaching an internet-connected device.
Because Bitchat is permissively licensed (MIT/Unlicense), blocking specific GitHub URLs does not remove the underlying codebase. Developers can clone or mirror the software on alternative platforms like Codeberg or GitLab, or distribute binaries directly via APK files. While URL blocking prevents new downloads from specific hosts, installed instances can continue forming local offline Bluetooth mesh networks.
