Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 591 posts

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

#71

Post by rvz »

poooogles wrote: post #59
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…

>In London alone, it is not possible to pay for public transport with cash and a card is required. Their reasons for doing this because it "benefits criminals" is echoing the "ban encryption" nonsense. Not strictly true. You can buy an oyster card with cash, you can load it with cash and use that. After a weeks worth of journeys you can return it and get your £5 deposit back and buy another one. Not exactly perfect b…

Thanks for your clarification, I edited this post.

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

#72

Post by amyboyd »

mancerayder wrote: post #34
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.

I didn't read that - are you sure about this? I am reading that backdoors are being asked to be created on WhatsApp. Anyway the messages aren't stored. From the article: Priti Patel, the U.K.’s home secretary, has previously warned that Facebook’s plan to enable users to send end-to-end encrypted messages would benefit criminals, and called on social media firms to develop “back doors” to give intelligence agencies a…

> "I didn't read that"

Why comment if you didn't read the article? It's in the first paragraph: "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"

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

#73

Post by brenden2 »

antpls wrote: post #65
brenden2 wrote: post #43

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, fo…

Wouldn't someone from inside the Facebook/Whatsapp team denounce it if that was the case? Like a whistle blower

FB's history suggests they have a culture of not blowing the whistle when shady things are going on.

I suspect most people want to keep their $500k+/year jobs instead of sticking their necks out. My friends who work at FAANG are largely mentally checked out, and just do it to collect their monies and retire ASAP. You can't pay rent with good feelings.

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

#74

Post by rvz »

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 that's possible and it is anonymous. I've clarified this in the edited post.

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

#75

Post by eitland »

zzzcpan wrote: post #53
nextos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Signal may or may not be ok at the moment, but not in a couple of years (it has all the power to silently push an update with a backdoor). Among all the popular messaging apps only Telegram is in a position to not cooperate with five eyes.

I use to defend Telegram but they are technically UK based AFAIK.

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

#76

Post by pmlnr »

1) If someone wants to find something you are "hiding", they will anyway. It's always been like this. Encryption is never a protection against this.

2) Personally I still think e2e encryption is not a secure solution on operating systems that runs godmode 3rd party, eg. google play services: it relies on a key that can be stolen too many ways too easily. Signal included.

3) internet eons (20 years) ago we nearly all used plain text IRC, closed source ICQ, AIM, etc, apart from a few. Recently I started to question the usefulness of "encrypt everything": we do need a way to verify the content from end to end, but is encryption really the way to do so? Are there any other ways, signatures, hashes, etc?

4) All that said, I'm not surprised. Skype used to be p2p, until M$ moved it to server-client, because "battery life". Everything is moving back to the Eternal Mainframe in this cycle.

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

#77

Post by brenden2 »

londons_explore wrote: post #60
brenden2 wrote: post #43

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, fo…

The Whatsapp binary is sufficiently transparent to enable someone determined to write their own client. Thats enough info for an expert to verify their "messages are end to end encrypted and we don't know the key" claim. The fly in the ointment is the client might have additional functionality to leak the e2e encryption key. That is far harder to find, but if it's use were widespread, it would be found by researchers…

Yep, the chat log backup basically renders WhatsApp completely insecure. They also constantly nag you inside the app to enable it. This is how they caught Michael Cohen (and presumably others). Unfortunately Signal does it, too.

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

#78

Post by sschueller »

londons_explore wrote: post #60
brenden2 wrote: post #43

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, fo…

The Whatsapp binary is sufficiently transparent to enable someone determined to write their own client. Thats enough info for an expert to verify their "messages are end to end encrypted and we don't know the key" claim. The fly in the ointment is the client might have additional functionality to leak the e2e encryption key. That is far harder to find, but if it's use were widespread, it would be found by researchers…

Attack or cooperation with custom soft keyboard makers is much easier. It may only give you one side of the conversation but no ones seems to care if those are secure. As long as they do a good job of spell checking.

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

#79

Post by pmlnr »

londons_explore wrote: post #60
brenden2 wrote: post #43

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, fo…

The Whatsapp binary is sufficiently transparent to enable someone determined to write their own client. Thats enough info for an expert to verify their "messages are end to end encrypted and we don't know the key" claim. The fly in the ointment is the client might have additional functionality to leak the e2e encryption key. That is far harder to find, but if it's use were widespread, it would be found by researchers…

It doesn't have to be whatsapp that "steals" the key, we have zigote and google play services to do that.

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

#80

Post by zzzcpan »

eitland wrote: post #75
zzzcpan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal may or may not be ok at the moment, but not in a couple of years (it has all the power to silently push an update with a backdoor). Among all the popular messaging apps only Telegram is in a position to not cooperate with five eyes.

I use to defend Telegram but they are technically UK based AFAIK.

They have a legal entity registered in the UK which they can drop any time.
Post reply on HN