Comment by Ms-J
14 hours ago
Who do they expect to fall for the claims that a Facebook owned messenger couldn't read your "encrypted" messages? It's truly funny.
Any large scale provider with headquarters in the USA will be subject to backdoors and information sharing with the government when they want to read or know what you are doing.
Me? I'd be very surprised if they can actually read encrypted messages (without pushing a malicious client update). The odds that no one at Meta would blow the whistle seem low, and a backdoor would likely be discovered by independent security researchers.
I'd be surprised as well. I know people who've worked on the WhatsApp apps specifically for years. It feels highly unlikely that they wouldn't have come across this backdoor and they wouldn't have mentioned it to me.
Happy to bet $100 that this lawsuit goes nowhere.
If there is such a back door, it would hardly follow it's widely known within the company. From the sparse reports on why Facebook/Meta has been caught doing this in the past, it's for favor trading and leverage at the highest levels.
That was my reaction on reading the headline. Of course Meta can read them, they own the entire stack. The question would really be do they?
Is there an independent audit of the Whatsapp client and of the servers?
> Any large scale provider with headquarters in the USA will be subject to backdoors and information sharing with the government when they want to read or know what you are doing.
Not just the USA. This is basically universal.
It's not guaranteed or by default.
This type of generalized defeatism does more harm than not.
> It's not guaranteed or by default.
Nation state governments do have the ability to coerce companies within their territory by default.
If you think this feature is unique to the USA, you are buying too much into a separate narrative. All countries can and will use the force of law to control companies within their borders when they see fit. The USA actually has more freedom and protections in this area than many countries, even though it’s far from perfect.
> This type of generalized defeatism does more harm than not.
Pointing out the realities of the world and how governments work isn’t defeatism.
Believing that the USA is uniquely bad and closing your eyes to how other countries work is more harmful than helpful.
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No, assuming that anything besides what you can verify yourself is compromised isn't "defeatism", although I'd agree that it's overkill in many cases.
But for your data you want to absolutely keep secret? It's probably the only to guarantee someone else somewhere cannot see it, default to assume if it's remote, someone will eventually be able to access it. If not today, it'll be stored and decrypted later.
This is correct. Yes, every government has the ability to use violence and coerce, but that takes coordination among other things. There are still places, and areas within those places, where enforcement and the ability to keep it secret is almost not possible.
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I have reached the point that I think even the chat control discussion might be a distraction because essentially they can already get anything. Yeah government needs to fill in a form to request, but that’s mostly automated I believe
>I have reached the point that I think even the chat control discussion might be a distraction because essentially they can already get anything.
Then why are politicians wasting time and attracting ire attempting pushing it through? Same goes for UK demanding backdoors. If they already have it, why start a big public fight over it?
Such initiatives are likely trying to make it easier.
I think you can safely remove “in the USA” from that sentence.
> Any large scale provider with headquarters in the USA will be subject to backdoors
Wonder what large scale provider outside USA won’t do that?
> Any large scale provider with headquarters in the USA will be subject to backdoors and information sharing with the government when they want to read or know what you are doing.
Thats just wrong. Signal for example is headquartered in the US and does not even have this capability (besides metadata)
They're only concerned someone at meta, they don't already control, could read their personal messages.
I do not believe them either. The swift start of the investigation by U.S. authorities only suggests there was no obstacle to opening one, not that nothing could be found. By “could not,” I mean it is not currently possible to confirm, not that there is necessarily nothing there.
Personally, I would never trust anyone big enough that it(in this case Meta) need and want to be deeply entangled in politics.