Briar had approached the High Court seeking a direction to the Central government to produce and publish the order to block the application, passed under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The open-source platform also sought a stay on the order.
It was stated that Briar is a Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) that is freely licensed to be used and anyone can copy, study and change the software in any way and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software.
The government told the Court that the Briar software/application can work even when there is no internet connection, and is suspected to be used by terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir. The application can be misused and can be a potential threat to the national security, sovereignty and integrity of India, the Court was told.
Source: Barandbench
