Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.? • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#41

Post by Barrin92 » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

from whatsapps official homepage, respectively (https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/28030015, https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/general/26000050)

>WhatsApp has no ability to see the content of messages or listen to calls on WhatsApp. That’s because the encryption and decryption of messages sent on WhatsApp occurs entirely on your device. Before a message ever leaves your device, it's secured with a cryptographic lock, and only the recipient has the keys.[...]

>A search warrant issued under the procedures described in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure or equivalent state warrant procedures upon a showing of probable cause is required to compel the disclosure of the stored contents of any account, which may include "about" information, profile photos, group information and address book, if available. In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages, and undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. WhatsApp offers end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated

Very interested to see what their response is and if their promise holds that they do not have technical access to content but merely to account information.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#42

Post by hdfbdtbcdg » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #27

This is essentially a worrying prospect if these developments are actually implemented or advance further. The users trust in the social media service is breached if a backdoor where to be placed in their products (It also defeats the purpose of the end-to-end encryption argument). If you reside in the UK and especially in London, things have just become 500% more Orwellian. >Priti Patel, the U.K.’s home secretary, h…

Can't you buy new oyster cards with cash?

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#43

Post by brenden2 » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

If the source code isn't available for audit by 3rd parties (or yourself), and you can't build it from source, then it was never really "secure" anyway. What lawmakers do or don't say is just noise.

Platforms that rely on trust (in this case, trusting that FB isn't doing bad things) provide very weak guarantees about privacy/security. They could easily include a keylogger in WhatsApp and bypass the e2e encryption, for example, and us regular folk have no way of knowing.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#44

Post by smudgymcscmudge » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 3:25 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #41

from whatsapps official homepage, respectively ( https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/28030015 , https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/general/26000050 ) >WhatsApp has no ability to see the content of messages or listen to calls on WhatsApp. That’s because the encryption and decryption of messages sent on WhatsApp occurs entirely on your device. Before a message ever leaves your device, it's secured with a cryptographic lock, a…

Did you notice the article doesn't say anything about decrypting the messages? It just says they have to turn over encrypted messages.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#45

Post by ainiriand » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

robert_foss wrote: post #30

nextos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what happens with Signal as it's US-based.

Maybe @moxie could enlighten us.

Use signal, use tor.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#46

Post by joshvm » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

hdfbdtbcdg wrote: post #42

rvz wrote: post #27

This is essentially a worrying prospect if these developments are actually implemented or advance further. The users trust in the social media service is breached if a backdoor where to be placed in their products (It also defeats the purpose of the end-to-end encryption argument). If you reside in the UK and especially in London, things have just become 500% more Orwellian. >Priti Patel, the U.K.’s home secretary, h…

Can't you buy new oyster cards with cash?

Yes, and most newsagents will let you top them up with cash.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#47

Post by em3rgent0rdr » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #41

from whatsapps official homepage, respectively ( https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/28030015 , https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/general/26000050 ) >WhatsApp has no ability to see the content of messages or listen to calls on WhatsApp. That’s because the encryption and decryption of messages sent on WhatsApp occurs entirely on your device. Before a message ever leaves your device, it's secured with a cryptographic lock, a…

I doubt the politicians who signed this treaty actually understand this technology.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#48

Post by cosmodisk » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #27

This is essentially a worrying prospect if these developments are actually implemented or advance further. The users trust in the social media service is breached if a backdoor where to be placed in their products (It also defeats the purpose of the end-to-end encryption argument). If you reside in the UK and especially in London, things have just become 500% more Orwellian. >Priti Patel, the U.K.’s home secretary, h…

I live in London.It has already gone way beyond of what Orwell could have ever imagined. However,despite of all the surveillance, London is the crime capital of the world.This is probably the best place for criminals,as unless you pull a machine gun on a crowd,not much will be investigated.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#49

Post by Pete_D » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

AnssiH wrote: post #12

Is there any more detailed info out there? I would expect such an accord between countries to enable data sharing, not force companies to record more data. So I'm sceptical of the article's claim for now.

(disclaimer, speculation) The Times article says this has been in progress for four years, so I suspect that this is the culmination of https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/UK-US_Bilateral_Agreem.... Which was originally planned to be encryption-neutral, but maybe things have changed in the past two years.

Re: Facebook, WhatsApp Will Have to Share Messages With U.K.?

#50

Post by tiernano » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

Gys wrote: post #17

> Social media platforms based in the U.S. including Facebook and WhatsApp will be forced to share users’ encrypted messages with British police under a new treaty between the two countries, according to a person familiar with the matter. This sounds as if the platforms are already sharing with the US authorities. So this being about them sharing it now with UK authorities.

If I'm reading that right, they are getting the encrypted messages, not the decrypted ones. Either whoever wrote the article doesn't know the different or the uk police have been fucked over by the us...