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Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go
131–140 of 262 posts
Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go
#132This is part of a broader problem. Many "apps" from WhatsApp to Zoom are treated as public spaces by citizens. But, legally the app-space is closer to a private space. This creates a mismatch between reality and expectations. (Zuckerberg can delete his chat history and you could not until Europe passed legislation forcing Facebook to do so.) I suffered the "Windows only" of gubernamental applications that excluded Li…
I wish I had more than one upvote, this capitulates perfectly my feelings on the situation. I see the same sentiment echoed in our American friends w.r.t. Chinese spying. Huawei is dangerous and must be stopped, but the NSA having broken encryption a bunch of times, sending NSL's to chip makers and such is fine. And that is not seen as hypocritical. We as Europeans have no technological industry without the USA, and…
Plenty of European countries are complicit in similar acts of their own, and many more tacitly assist. I don't think many deserve being painted as a victim of this situation. There's an article right now on the FP about the Netherlands helping GCHQ break Argentinean encryption.
In any case, I think the hypocrisy makes sense if you consider that the people saying this are from places (the US + close allies) that probably, all things considered, benefit [EDIT:] more than others by government privacy invasions. The goal of these governments is presumably to further their own interests at the cost of everyone else's. Why else do several of these allies willingly sign up to trade information with the NSA?
EDIT: "more than they are harmed" => "more than others"
Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go
#133WhatsApp is a no-go. Unencrypted e-mail is a no-go.
Please send a fax instead.
I wish I was joking.
Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go
#134I'm an Android lifer (all my smartphones) and now live in Australia. I use Whatsapp for 99% of my personal messaging and frankly, I love it. Same messaging experience for everyone (including emojis), great desktop app, easy backup & restore as you switch phones, was early on the reply-swipe functionality, easy forwarding, voice messages, . No, none of these are "killer" features, but it's honestly one of the purest e…
Backup works android->android and iOS->iOS but not if you want to cross the lines; guess you don’t care about that... but: If you use Google’s backup for WhatsApp, it is NOT encrypted. Your local backup IS encrypted. It’s not your data - you can’t have it except through the app. But google can (and does) have that data for likely 95% of android WhatsApp users; E2E with this state of affairs is not very useful. (I ass…
They say, back-up encryption is supposed to work soon.
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2020/03/whatsapp-tes...
But even if, WhatsApp remains a closed source app, owned by Facebook. I really see no reason to trust them. Zuckerbergs privacy policy seems unchanged, since he called his user dumb fucs for trusting him with their data, while at the same time, buying the surrounding houses of his Villa, to protect his own privacy.
The only thing holding them back is a bit public image, but the general population do not care much and maybe breaking of privacy laws. But since the governments also really do not want real encryption for everyone, I would rather imagine "gentlements agreement" behind doors, than real investigations, in case for example WhatsApp would secretly send also the key for the backup to someone else.
Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go
#135I'm an Android lifer (all my smartphones) and now live in Australia. I use Whatsapp for 99% of my personal messaging and frankly, I love it. Same messaging experience for everyone (including emojis), great desktop app, easy backup & restore as you switch phones, was early on the reply-swipe functionality, easy forwarding, voice messages, . No, none of these are "killer" features, but it's honestly one of the purest e…
> Every time an article about Whatsapp on HN or Reddit pops up I fearfully look to see if there are legitimate privacy concerns.
There are legitimate privacy concerns. The main concern here is that Facebook builds up a network of who you are in contact with, how often you message them, when you message them, etc.
You are either not aware of this or you don't mind, but calling it illegitimate is not a fair assessment of the risk.
What if this data is leaked, hacked or sold or Facebook is pressured to release it to certain governments and they use this data to find dissidents?
This data, in combination with other Facebook data, could also be used by advertisers to target people specifically with questionable offers and materials, etc. People might object to their data being sold this way.
What if the US regime changes to a dictatorship, I know, it might seem very far fetched that some insane barbarian becomes president, but bear with me. Facebook might be forced to reveal said information and the regime will then use this to find dissidents.
What you should be asking yourself is 'Why is this app, that costs millions to make and maintain, that was bought for billions, free for me?' There is someone out there making a profit. This might not be a big concern to you personally, but it is not an illegitimate concern.
Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
The appeal of WhatsApp is simply that everyone already has it. It's the only messaging platform that can be used to message all your contacts. Network effect, that's it.
Not everyone already has it.
Almost everyone has it. I do not want to use WhatsApp, but in The Netherlands it is nearly impossible to go without it (although it seems you do ;)).
E.g. the parents of our daughter's class uses a WhatsApp group. You can decide not to join it, but you will miss out on all kinds of activities people plan together for kids, school-related messages, etc.
Similarly, our larger family uses a WhatsApp group to stay in touch, coordinate our the bi-yearly family outing, etc.
And this goes on and on, basically everyone communicates through WhatsApp groups. If you do not join them, you miss out on a lot of social activities, etc.
I wish WhatsApp just stayed independent and charged $1 per year, which they did irregularly before they were bought by Facebook.
Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't actually use Bluetooth. When you scan the QR code your browser pairs with your phone and messages are relayed back through WhatsApp servers between the two, so as long as both have an internet connection it should work regardless of where they are.
gotta repair every day though, from what I remember
Yep, it actually works terribly in my experience. It's very slow even for web apps, is unreliable in staying paired, and (at least for me) often has issues with file attachments. I would much prefer a standalone app like Signal or Telegram.
Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish I had more than one upvote, this capitulates perfectly my feelings on the situation. I see the same sentiment echoed in our American friends w.r.t. Chinese spying. Huawei is dangerous and must be stopped, but the NSA having broken encryption a bunch of times, sending NSL's to chip makers and such is fine. And that is not seen as hypocritical. We as Europeans have no technological industry without the USA, and…
Plenty of European countries are complicit in similar acts of their own, and many more tacitly assist. I don't think many deserve being painted as a victim of this situation. There's an article right now on the FP about the Netherlands helping GCHQ break Argentinean encryption. In any case, I think the hypocrisy makes sense if you consider that the people saying this are from places (the US + close allies) that proba…
> There's an article right now on the FP about the Netherlands helping GCHQ break Argentinean encryption.
EUEU cooperation is different though than USEU cooperation.
I will very much agree though, that GCHQ has been in bed with NSA for far too long and it's disgusting.
But I think there's a clear delineation between: "Our government does shady things" and "Another nations government does shady things, and incidentally we're entirely dependent on them not to do it to us".
Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go
#139Just a few years ago, paramedics in Germany were routinely (and probably not entirely legally) using WhatsApp for communicating with the hospital while en route because there wasn't (and still isn't) a reliable, secure and interoperable system allowing healthcare providers to communicate with each other. It's not like people in Germany are using tools such as WhatsApp in a professional context because they're neglige…
TETRA isn't interoperable?
Its introduction has been an unmitigated disaster in Germany (as apparently and unfortunately is wont in Germany), see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOS-Funk#Einf%C3%BChrung_in_De... (German-only, sorry).
It's still not universally implemented and hospitals aren't part of the network either.
Re: Germany's data chief tells ministries WhatsApp is a no-go
#140This is part of a broader problem. Many "apps" from WhatsApp to Zoom are treated as public spaces by citizens. But, legally the app-space is closer to a private space. This creates a mismatch between reality and expectations. (Zuckerberg can delete his chat history and you could not until Europe passed legislation forcing Facebook to do so.) I suffered the "Windows only" of gubernamental applications that excluded Li…
>The USA is in a position to shutdown all the technological infrastructure of Europe (AWS, Google, Facebook, Azure, ...) and to openly spy its citizens OK, and what can we do about that? We build our own successful cars, we build our own successful planes but it seems like when it comes to building highly scalable world dominating software we are powerless even though our universities churn out tons of talented CS en…
I thought that in US salary is significantly higher than in EU. Probably that's the main differentiator.