If it’s possible for WhatsApp to intercept the communications of “bad people” for law enforcement, it’s fundamentally impossible for any communication to be private. The existence of a back door is automatically a gaping security flaw.
There’s no such thing as “securely intercepting” messages. Either they’re secure against all actors or they’re not secure.
Maybe it’s worth having that security hole then. I think it’s a bit crazy that terrorists or child abusers can plan their crimes using WhatsApp without the police being able to intercept their messages.
Also, if we’re able to contact our banks over the internet securely (and obviously the bank can still see everything about our accounts if they want, while criminals hopefully won’t be able to), then surely an equivalent should be possible for things like WhatsApp.
Ok so basic question you should be able to answer then how do you stop a foreign government from spying on other countries citizens? WhatsApp is not just a western world app. For example it’s used in Russia and the US and the UK so if Putin went to Meta and said “I want everything you have on Ex prime minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson and you can’t tell them” what reason would meta have to deny his request if the precedent by the UK is that this data needs to have a back door and if you say then the user should be notified then anyone under investigation is just not going to say anything incriminating and if it includes old messages then you risk the political espionage if anything is shared under the assumption everything is end to end encrypted. What about trade secrets, a corrupt government official could get a companies trade secrets for a business friend from anywhere in the world.
There is a great video by Tom Scott that talks about this exact situation when the UK tried to break encryption 5 years ago but that failed because it wasn’t feasible from a security standpoint. There is also a great episode from Last Week Tonight talking about encryption and government attempts to get around it. We’ve seen from things like the Pegasus malware that repressive governments will use this little break in encryption to jail protestors and journalists and spy on their political rivals, having an official way will just make it easier.
It’s simple.
If it’s possible for WhatsApp to intercept the communications of “bad people” for law enforcement, it’s fundamentally impossible for any communication to be private. The existence of a back door is automatically a gaping security flaw.
There’s no such thing as “securely intercepting” messages. Either they’re secure against all actors or they’re not secure.
Maybe it’s worth having that security hole then. I think it’s a bit crazy that terrorists or child abusers can plan their crimes using WhatsApp without the police being able to intercept their messages.
Also, if we’re able to contact our banks over the internet securely (and obviously the bank can still see everything about our accounts if they want, while criminals hopefully won’t be able to), then surely an equivalent should be possible for things like WhatsApp.
Ok so basic question you should be able to answer then how do you stop a foreign government from spying on other countries citizens? WhatsApp is not just a western world app. For example it’s used in Russia and the US and the UK so if Putin went to Meta and said “I want everything you have on Ex prime minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson and you can’t tell them” what reason would meta have to deny his request if the precedent by the UK is that this data needs to have a back door and if you say then the user should be notified then anyone under investigation is just not going to say anything incriminating and if it includes old messages then you risk the political espionage if anything is shared under the assumption everything is end to end encrypted. What about trade secrets, a corrupt government official could get a companies trade secrets for a business friend from anywhere in the world.
There is a great video by Tom Scott that talks about this exact situation when the UK tried to break encryption 5 years ago but that failed because it wasn’t feasible from a security standpoint. There is also a great episode from Last Week Tonight talking about encryption and government attempts to get around it. We’ve seen from things like the Pegasus malware that repressive governments will use this little break in encryption to jail protestors and journalists and spy on their political rivals, having an official way will just make it easier.