Comment by cesarb
15 days ago
> No, that does not suggest none exists, it only says they don’t have access to it. They could have chosen or have been ordered to give the keys to the government agency but not keep one themselves.
The whole definition of "end-to-end encrypted" is that only the two ends have the keys. If anyone or anything other than the two ends (the one sending and the one receiving) has access to the keys, it's not end-to-end encrypted.
Whatsapp has had end-to-end encryption since 2016. But it only added encryption to cloud backups in 2021. They didn't share any key material with Google, just backed up the messages and media without any encryption to begin with.
Yes exactly. Google is very careful to say that "Google cannot access Android end-to-end encrypted backup data" and notice it doesn't say that all Android backups are end-to-end encrypted. For what we know, Google could have decided to use non-end-to-end backups in the UK and end-to-end backups everywhere else.
I think that's the implication, not the definition. Data remains encrypted even when a third party gets access a key.